Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Worlds Biggest Telescope

Part of the Worlds Biggest radio Telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA)starts working today.
Its already the biggest, in the world, and will eventually span 4 continents when its finished, then its synthesized appeture
will be as big as a continent.
It was switched on today in Australia, at the moment it only has 36 movable dishes each 12meters in Diam:.
Eventually the Australian part of SKA will be increased to another 60 dishes, (to total 96, 12meter dishes).
Even now it is a very very fast and powerful telescope, and able to survey the skys and collect more information faster than any other telescope...even thought it is less than 10% completed, in world total.
From today it will be looking further out into Space, and probing the origins of stars and galaxies. As well as looking for Black Holes and detecting the Electronic signatures that other life forms may be using. According to the SKA Organisation, once completed, (by 2024) the SKA will be sensitive enough that it will be able to detect an Airport radar, or radio transmissions on a planet located 50 light years away.

When the rest of the Square Kilometer Array is built, added and finished in Africa, added in New Zealand plus America,
the World will have the most powerful fast supersensitive Telescope that will easily be able to not only make new scientific discoverys, but will certainly be able to find any signatures of extraterestrial life, what ever they may be.

I believe that Goverments will have to built a super-fast huge Computer to analyse all the information that the SKA will be
receiving.
For even now the Australian part of SKA is collecting the same information in 5 minutes,
that other Radio scopes (Atacama, New Mexico, Jodrell Bank. etc) have taken 10,000 hours to collect.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12891215

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/05/askap_radio_telescope_opens/

Super! With that big an aperture they will be able to really get some precision measurements.

Actually for searching for extraterrestrial intelligence I think they should be looking for very low frequency signals. I expect the Earth is radiating strongly at 50 and 60 Hz. I suspect that any civilization that depends on power transmission will use low frequencies, because they are easy to work with.

Bill Gill

The reason I say we should look for low frequencies is that they are the easiest to handle for power distribution. As I said 50 and 60 Hz are the commonest frequencies we use. So, since we are using extremely large amounts of power which is distributed at those frequencies then the Earth must be radiating them. I assume that other civilizations will also go for such low frequency transmission systems, so they will also be radiating in that range. I would actually plan such a search for a range of possibly 20 to 3000 Hz, since it is unlikely that they would choose the same frequencies that we did.

Of course detecting these low frequencies is going to be a problem. Building antennae and receivers to catch them will be tricky, and there will be a huge amount of noise from our own radiation.

As far as why I say 50/60 Hz well, while more of the world may be using 50 Hz the USA uses a large part of the Earths energy, and therefore will supply a large part of the Earths low frequency radiation.

Bill Gill

I'm not saying that the Earth vibrates. I am saying that all the electric power being generated, transmitted, and used all around the world will release radiation at those frequencies. No one power line will release much, but with all of them going there will be a significant amount of radiation.

And I'm not sure that you understand what I am saying about searching for those low frequencies. I am not saying that they make a good communications method. I am saying that detecting them coming from another star would be a good indicator of an intelligent life form on a planet of that star. Once we have detected intelligent life making contact with it would be another problem.

Bill Gill

WORLDS BIGGEST TELESCOPE UPDATE

In Chile, Radio Astronomers have Install a Supercomputer,
5000 meters above sea level to be able to service the
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Correlator, which will ultimately combine deep space signals captured by the telescope's dozens of antennas.
But building a supercomputer that can handle signals from 2016 possible antenna pair combinations has been no easy task, since the thin air has prevented the Supercomputer from being cooled properly, as more and more 12 meter dishes are being added to the array, cooling will become more of a problem.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Correlator, has to ultimately combine deep space signals captured by the telescope's dozens of antennas.
"The technical challenges were enormous, and our team pulled it off," said Mark McKinnon, the North American ALMA Project Director at the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Virginia, in a statement.
The telescope should be completed this by March 2013, and
will easily be able to not only make new scientific discoverys, but will certainly be able to find any signatures of extraterestrial life, what ever they may be. In fact the SKA will be sensitive enough to be able to detect an alien Airport radar, or Radio transmissions on a planet located up to 50 light years away.

***Wow
Keep watching this space.

Wow, finding radio transmissions from 50 light years is fantastic. That is really going to be able to find out some fantastic things about the universe.

Bill Gill

If you google with the right name Bill you will get what you seek

It's called Schumann resonances first proposed by Nicola Tesla and named after Winfried Schumann.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances

Actually it was Mike who was googling for the info on the resonances. And I was trying to clarify that I was looking at the radiation we are generating at power frequencies. I have done a little searching and haven't found anything about how much 50 and 60 Hz radiation the Earth is sending into space.

That is an interesting link though. I hadn't thought about that possibility. So, do the Shumann resonance frequencies radiate enought that we could use them to detect planets with atmospheres at interstellar distances?

Bill Gill

You could the problem is our atmosphere block ELF and so you would need to go out to space and the size of an antena for ELF is prohibitively large to get into space.

With improvements in nano technology constructing a thin antena for these sorts of things I guess would become feasable.

Well, things are developing in that line all the time. In fact that might be a good idea to expand the use of RF astronomy into the ELF range. I don't know what might be happening at those frequencies, but it seems that every time we extend astronomy into a new area we start learning more new things.

And being able to build a huge antenna in space might not be as big a problem as it seems at first. With the latest in materials we are getting structures lighter and lighter all the time. I can imagine a net constructed of extremely fine filaments that could be rolled up into a very small light package and then expand to a structure miles in diameter. After all now they are talking about building cell phone repeaters that have antennas that are sprayed onto convenient surfaces. That of course is a completely different frequency band, but the general idea could be extended to other areas.

Bill Gill