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‘Great scientific step forward’: Construction of world’s largest radio observatory is finally under way

Two giant telescopes — one in Australia, the other in South Africa — will comprise the supersensitive Square Kilometre Array.
  1. Sarah Wild
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After 30 years of planning and negotiations, construction begins this week on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio-astronomy observatory. The giant instrument — to be built across sprawling sites in Australia and Africa — will collect the radio signals emitted by celestial objects and will hopefully shed light on some of the most enigmatic problems in astronomy, such as the nature of dark matter and how galaxies form.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04254-7

References

  1. Heywood, I. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10541 (2022).

  2. Yusef-Zadeh, F. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10552 (2022).

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