Episode 60: Square Kilometre Array

Artist’s impression of the SKA-Mid dishes and MeerKAT dishes in
South Africa.Credit: SKAO The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a
global science and engineering project to build a revolutionary new
radio telescope with extraordinary scientific ambitions. With
funding from 10 nations, construction of the SKA will
begin in 2016 and be fully operational in 2024. It will tackle
some of the profoundest questions of cosmology, including organic
molecules, gravitational waves, pulsars orbiting black holes, and
light from the earliest stars that illuminated the universe. To do
this, the SKA will require supercomputers, innovative new power
stations, and high-speed communication links that do not currently
exist. This interview with Professor Michael Kramer was
recorded in March 2012 at the National Astronomy Meeting in the
University of Manchester, two months before the announcement that
the Square Kilometre Array will be built in South
Africa, along with  Australia & New Zealand.
Professor Kramer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio
Astronomy in Germany, which manages the 100m Effelsberg
Radio Telescope, is a former associate director at Jodrell
Bank and still a professor there, talks about the technical,
political and economic concerns associated with the SKA project.