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April 20, 2020
EPFL will be responsible for coordinating the contributions of the Swiss scientific community to this project involving thirteen countries.
Image above: The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is designed to detect radio waves from celestial objects. (Photo: EPFL).
EPFL will participate in the construction of the largest radio telescope ever developed. Called “Square Kilometer Array” (SKA), the project involves thirteen countries and is intended to unravel certain mysteries of the universe.
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This giant telescope is one of the "most ambitious scientific tools of the 21st century," said the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne (EPFL) on Monday in a press release. She explains that she has acceded to the organizing committee and that she will be responsible for coordinating the contributions of the Swiss scientific community to the project.
Image above: The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is designed to detect radio waves from celestial objects. (Photo: SKA/Wikimedia).
The SKA will be built over the next few years on two sites: in South Africa with 130 antennas 15 meters in diameter and in Austalia with 130,000 parabolic-type antennas. "Thanks to this installation, some of the great mysteries of the universe will be able to be studied in detail," promises EPFL.
Radio waves
The SKA is designed to detect radio waves emanating from celestial objects, the same type of emissions used for example by smartphones. It is thus distinguished from most telescopes which are based on visible light.
"This new high performance telescope will give us a new vision of the universe," notes Jean-Paul Kneib, director of the Astrophysics Laboratory at EPFL. "The SKA can for example identify planetary systems in formation, galaxies surrounded by hydrogen gas, or even black holes present in the center of galaxies located billions of light years away," he explains, quoted in the press release.
EPFL joins the giant radio telescope SKA for the Swiss community
The SKA organizing committee, of which EPFL is now a member, must oversee the design of the telescope until the transition to international observatory is completed. This should take place during 2020.
EPFL then Switzerland
EPFL membership should benefit "the entire Swiss scientific community and will open up new perspectives for companies," notes Xavier Reymond, director of the International Research Organizations sector of the State Secretariat for Education.
After EPFL, Switzerland could become a full member of the SKA organizing committee. A first debate has been launched recently in the Parliament, underlines the Lausanne university.
EPFL campus in Switzerland. Banner Credit: EPFL
Several members of the Swiss academic community are involved in the project, under the aegis of EPFL. These include the Universities of Geneva, Zurich and Bern, the EPFZ in Zurich, the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS), the University of Applied Sciences of North-West Switzerland (FHNW) or the Planetarium of the Museum Lucernre transport.
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - Federal Institute of Technology from Lausanne (EPFL): https://www.epfl.ch/en/
Images (mentioned), Text, Video, Text, Credits: ATS/EPFL/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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