Murchison astronomy mega-project step closer to fruition as construction begins on SKA-Low Telescope

It’s a mega-project likened to being just as big as the Hubble telescope which could give us answers to questions about the universe we haven’t even contemplated yet — and it’s right here in the Mid West.

After 30 years of planning, bidding, negotiating and preparing, construction on the Square Kilometre Array-Low (SKA-Low) telescope, the world’s largest radio telescope, has begun in the Murchison.

More than 70 people, including members of the SKA Observatory (SKAO), CSIRO, politicians, the Wajarri Yamatji community and Murchison residents met in a ceremony to mark the next stage of the ambitious project.

Over the next five years, 131,072 antennas over 512 stations spanning 74km, will be built.

Along with the SKA-Mid telescope being built in South Africa which detect higher frequency radio waves, the massive cluster of antennas will form a larger telescope which could answer some of the universe’s deepest questions.

Construction is expected to finish in 2028, but scientists will already be producing results before reaching full capacity.

What sets the SKA-Low apart from current radio telescopes is the sheer size of the telescope and the next-generation supercomputers that will process its information, according to SKA-Low director Dr Sarah Pearce.

Despite its humble appearance, with “Christmas tree”-shaped metal poles covered in spikes and wire, Dr Pearce said it’s a project on the same level in terms of scale and potential to projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope or Large Hadron Collider.

“It will be able to see the faintest signals, it will be the highest resolution and importantly it will be the fastest survey telescope, so we will be able to map the sky more quickly,” she said.

With the detail, distance and speed on offer from SKA-Low, scientists hope to study a vast array of mysteries about space, from dark energy to magnetic fields, to how Einstein’s theory of relativity holds up on the edge of a black hole.

Potentially, it could even pick up radio signals from lifeforms vast distances away, answering the age-old question; are we alone?

One aim is to look at bodies so far away that the signals captured from them originate from the very early period of the universe, showing how the first stars and galaxies formed in the first billion years after the Big Bang.

For many who have worked on the project for decades, it’s that prospect of looking at what the universe was like in its infancy that is most exciting.

Curtin University’s Professor Steven Tingay, deputy executive director at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, has worked on the project for more than 20 years.

“The telescopes are going to look back close to the beginning of our universe 13.8 billion years ago, so this is really a facility that is going to help us tell the story of the entire universe, and where we came from,” he said.

CSIRO director of space and astronomy Dr Douglas Bock has been part of the project since 1996.

“I just like the idea of being able to take pictures of the first billion years of the universe, we know so little about that time and history,” he said.

Dr Jacinta Delhaize, an Australian astronomer working in South Africa, and host of The Cosmic Savannah podcast, said she expected the SKAO to give her the information she needed for her research in how galaxies age.

“It is going to help revolutionise our understanding of the universe,” she said.

For Dr Pearce, who has worked on SKA-Low for more than a decade, what sparks her imagination is the unimagined discoveries which often come about through research.

“Whenever you build a new telescope you find things that you didn’t imagine, with the Hubble Space Telescope for instance, more than half of its top discoveries were not imagined when it was designed,” she said.

After years of bidding, the Murchison was selected in 2011 to host SKA-Low, because of its remoteness, protecting the telescope from signal interference.

It will cost $3 billion to build the telescopes in the Murchison and South Africa, with $400 million funded by the Australian Government.

Minister for Science Ed Husic said the SKA-Low telescope demonstrated the huge potential Australia, and WA, had for big scientific projects.

“When the world needs to handle the secrets of the universe, it looks to us because of our tremendous legacy and talent in radio astronomy, and in turn our country has called on WA to help make this a historic project a reality,” he said.

Data from the telescope will go to the Pawsey Super Computer in Perth, a machine capable of doing a calculation in one second that would take a human 1.5 billion years, from which it will go to the SKAO headquarters in the United Kingdom.

A team of 60 engineers will be based in Geraldton to maintain the telescope.

Mr Husic also said he believed the project would encourage Australian kids to develop a fascination for science.

Throughout the ceremony, the importance of the respectful relationship between the SKAO and the Wajarri Yamatji community was repeatedly emphasised.

Last month the Wajarri community signed an agreement giving approval for SKA-Low, in return receiving promises to treat the land with respect and provide opportunities for Wajarri people.

Wajarri representative Dwayne Mallard said he was confident the project would respectfully treat the land on which it was built.

Wadjarri elder Colin Hamlett said he was optimistic his community would feel the benefits of the project.

“I feel proud of it, because it’s brought a lot of good stuff for the Wajarri people that they never had before ... job opportunities, enterprises,” he said.