World’s largest radio telescope could detect alien life

The Jodrell Bank telescope

Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, north-western England, has been selected as the headquarters for a $2.5 billion project to build the world’s biggest radio telescope.

An agreement to run the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) from Jodrell Bank was signed in Rome by Australia, China, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK.

SKA is designed to answer some key questions about the Universe including whether or not there is evidence of biological or other forms of alien life.

The SKA is set to be one of the grand scientific endeavors of the 21st Century. And like other such ventures on a giant scale – the space station, for example – the immense cost means it has to be undertaken as an international collaboration.

The SKA’s huge fields of antennas will sweep the sky for answers to the major outstanding questions in astronomy. It will be sensitive to light sources that radiate at centimeter to metre wavelengths.

The SKA will probe the early Universe, test Einstein’s theory of gravity and even search for alien intelligent life. It should be able to see the hydrogen in the first stars and galaxies to form after the Big Bang. And it will pinpoint precisely the positions of the nearest 100 million galaxies.

Scientists hope their structure will reveal new details about “dark energy”, the mysterious negative pressure that appears to be pushing the cosmos apart at an ever-increasing speed.

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