Cosmos secrets drive workers building giant telescope

Scientists from eight countries gathered at sites in South Africa and Australia on Monday to mark the start of construction on the world's biggest radio telescope that is hoped will offer a first view into the formation of the universe.

The Square Kilometre Array, or SKA project, is an international effort to build the world's biggest astronomy observatory which, when completed in 2028, could give detailed insight into the history of the cosmos, experts said.

The $2.1 billion international project will gather radio waves from an arrangement of 197 dishes in South Africa and more than 131,000 antennae in the Australian outback, and the entire venture will be managed from the SKA Observatory headquarters in Manchester, England.

Unprecedented detail

It will create data collecting areas measuring hundreds of thousands of square meters, enabling astronomers to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail and faster than any system currently in existence, the SKA Observatory website stated.

Ceremonies were held on Monday in the remote Murchison area of Western Australia and in the Karoo region of South Africa. The sites were chosen for scientific and technical reasons, including radio quietness, which comes from being some of the most remote locations on Earth.

"This is the moment it becomes real," Philip Diamond, director-general of SKA Organisation, told BBC News. "It's been a 30-year journey."

Current members of SKA include South Africa, Australia, China, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Many more countries have expressed intention to join the effort, meaning the collection area could be expanded further.

"The SKA is going to contribute to so many areas of astronomy," Shari Breen, the observatory's head of science operations, said.

Scientists said the massive telescope will be able to gather very low frequency radio waves that date back nearly 14 billion years to the birth of the universe.