[AstroNet] SKA FORUM 2009 PRESS RELEASE

[marina at southernscience.co.za]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 26, 2009

WORLD ECONOMIC RECESSION WON’T JEOPARDISE THE SQUARE KILOMETRE ARRAY - Now
is the time to invest in scientific thinkers to solve our planet’s
problems, says SKA stakeholders

CAPE TOWN (Feb. 26, 2009). The opportunities, benefits and challenges of
building the world’s biggest radio telescope – the Square Kilometre Array
(SKA) – were in the spotlight at the SKA Forum 2009 in Cape Town this
week. Leading South African and international astronomers met with
representatives from governments and funding agencies from around the
world. South African industry was also well represented. The SKA Forum was
the highlight of two weeks of specialist meetings that focused on the
design, construction and science goals of this mega instrument.

Delegates felt that the current world economic crisis should not have a
negative impact on the project and in fact presents an unrivalled
opportunity to invest in critical science infrastructure and skills.
Speakers emphasized that countries which would recover best from the
economic malaise were those which invested in the future.

“The world’s current and future challenges demand scientific thinkers and
technological innovation,” said Professor John Womersley of the Science
and Technology Facilities Council in the UK. “The quickest way to get out
of the economic dilemmas is to be able to evolve scientifically and that
requires a scientifically trained workforce,” he explained. Womersley
added that only 20 – 30% of astronomy is about understanding the universe.
“The rest is about training people!”

Dr Robert-Jan Smits of the European Commission confirmed EU support for
the project because of its enormous potential to shift the frontiers of
knowledge. He called on SKA project leaders to broaden the political
support for this project in more countries around the world. Already 19
countries and 55 scientific institutions are involved in the SKA project,
and several more countries are expected to join the consortium soon.

Dr Gill Marcus, Chair of the South African banking group ABSA, expressed
the hope that the SKA will be built in Africa. She is convinced that the
telescope will give young Africans a sense of purpose and inspire them to
pursue maths and science at school, and to follow careers in science and
engineering. This will create a critical mass of problem-solving thinkers,
able to find solutions to the water, food, health, energy and
environmental challenges of the continent. “Africa’s time has come,” she
believes. “The SKA presents an enormous opportunity for the African
continent to show the world that we can be the best.”

Dr Bernie Fanaroff, project director of SKA South Africa agreed that the
SKA presents a new way of looking at development. “Telescopes look at very
weak signals and so need to push the limits of technology. It often
produces new technologies which later give rise to innovations and
products which can be commercialised, which we can’t predict at this
stage,” he explained.

“On the science side, the SKA represents an enormous leap in radio
astronomy into an area that we have not investigated before,” said
Professor Malcolm Longair, eminent cosmologist from Cambridge University
in the UK. “It will open up a new era in astrophysics and cosmology for
all astronomers and has huge potential for new discoveries.” Professor
Longair went on to say that these great discoveries will be made by young
people, because they don’t know how difficult these problems are. “They
don’t know that these questions are impossible to solve and therefore they
will go and solve them!”

While astronomers are excited about the SKA’s potential to answer
questions about the universe, governments and funders view this project as
a way to attract young people into science and engineering and to equip
them with very high-level skills.

The SKA will consist of thousands of dishes and other collecting devices,
spread over a vast area, but working together as one instrument with a
joint receiving surface of one square kilometre. Cutting edge technologies
and computing power like never before will make this a true “time
machine”, able to detect very faint celestial signals in order to look
back to the early universe. “Once the SKA comes online, its computing
power will be equal to all the people on the planet doing a billion
calculations per second all at the same time,” explained Dr Bruce
Elmegreen of IBM in the USA.

The two countries shortlisted to host the SKA are South Africa and
Australia. Both are building radio telescopes (called “pathfinders”) to
contribute to the SKA technology. Both pathfinder telescopes will be
premier telescopes in their own right. South Africa has begun construction
on the Karoo Array Telescope (called MeerKAT) and the Australians are
working on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). At the Forum, South
Africa’s Minister for Science and Technology, Mosibudi Mangena, announced
a new collaborative venture between South Africa and Australia on science
programmes that will be possible because of the complementary nature of
the two telescopes.

Preceding the Forum, 60 astronomers and funding agency representatives
visited South Africa’s site in the Karoo, in the Northern Cape Province.
Everyone was tremendously impressed by the progress on the infrastructure
and facilities in place.

If the SKA is built in South Africa, it will have outstations in at least
eight other African countries. These African partners were also at the
Forum to re-affirm their commitment to this project and to plan with the
South African project team for future SKA preparations in their countries.

Before the final site for the SKA can be announced between 2011 and 2012,
many more studies will be done. These studies will compare radio frequency
interference, configuration, availability and cost of infrastructure, cost
of construction and life-cycle costs for the South African and Australian
sites. It is clear that both the Australian and South African sites are
excellent and both countries enjoy support from their governments to host
the SKA.

“South Africa probably has a cost advantage and we also have excellent
legislation to protect our site from radio frequency interference, now and
in the future,” Dr Fanaroff added. “What will definitely improve our
chances is to be able to show that South Africans are behind this bid, as
they were in the Football World Cup bid.”

Construction on the SKA should start in 2013. Early SKA science will be
done from 2017 onwards.

- END -

SKA International: www.skatelescope.org
SKA South Africa: www.ska.ac.za
SKA Australia: www.ska.gov.au

Images: www.ska.ac.za/media/visuals.shtml

Contacts
Dr Bernie Fanaroff; +27 82 (0) 603 2306; bfanaroff at fanaroff.co.za (SKA
South Africa director)
Dr Adrian Tiplady; +27 72 372 0134; atiplady at ska.ac.za (SKA South Africa
project scientist)
Marina Joubert; +27 (0) 83 409 4254; marina at ska.ac.za (Communication and
media)


Key people from the SKA Forum to interview:
1.	Professor Richard Schilizzi; Director: SKA Program Development Office
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, The University of Manchester
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 4055; Email: schilizzi at skatelescope.org
2.	Dr Bruce Elmegreen, Physical Sciences Department, IBM (USA)
Tel: 1 914 945 2448; Email: bge at us.ibm.com
3.	Professor John Womersley, Director: Science Programmes
Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 7796 993 546; Email: john.womersley at stfc.ac.uk
4.	Professor Malcolm Longair, Cambridge University
Tel: +44 1223 765 953; Email: msl1000 at cam.ac.uk
Bio and visuals at: http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/longairm.php
5.	Professor Lyn Beazley, Chief Scientist of Western Australia
Tel: +61 8 9480 3682; Email: lyn.beazley at bgpa.wa.gov.au
6.	Brian Boyle, SKA Project Leader, CSIRO, Australia
Email: brian.boyle at csiro.au
7.	Professor Justin Jonas, Project Scientist, South Africa
Tel: +27 (0) 72 508 5307; Email: J.Jonas at ru.ac.za