Author_Institution :
Electromagn. Commun. Lab., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA, USA
Abstract :
We are all familiar with Einstein, the Theory of Relativity he advanced and the mysteries of the universe that it helped unravel for us. Recently, a Radio Astronomy project utilizing a Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which, as the name suggests, will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometer, has been proposed for probing the very edges of the universe by observing extremely weak signals that might have originated from distances so far away that it is necessary to go to relatively low frequencies associated with the `red shift´-predicted by the Theory of Relativity-and utilize collecting apertures that are extremely large, in order to observe them. The SKA will actually operate over a wide range of frequencies, and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. Furthermore, by utilizing advanced processing technology, it will be able to survey the sky more than ten thousand times faster than ever before. With receiving stations extending out to distance of 3,000 km from a concentrated central core, it will continue radio astronomy´s tradition of providing the highest resolution images in all astronomy. The SKA will be built in a country, most likely in the southern hemisphere where the view of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is best and radio interference is extremely low.
