Recently, the construction of the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array Radio Telescope, has officially started construction in South Africa.
The location of the project, Caernarfon, a small town in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, has attracted global attention. Recently, invited media reporters visited the project site.
To explore the mysteries of the universe and receive signals from outer space, the pace of human scientific exploration has never stopped.
The world's largest radio telescope project, SKA, started in South Africa so far. This is also an international scientific engineering project involving scientists from many countries participating in core technology projects.
Due to its unique geographical advantages, Carnarvon, located in the middle of the Karoo Basin in South Africa, happens to perfectly avoid all the "natural enemies" of the square kilometer array of radio telescopes, such as radio waves, dense population, and car noise.
Before the construction of the South African site started, the front-end pilot project - 64 butterfly radio telescopes had been completed.
Electric telescopes will help us capture the strongest and clearest signals from the universe and outer space.
South African director of the square kilometer array radio telescope project: The project will build a butterfly telescope array, and our partners in other countries will also install 133 butterfly telescopes here.
This will form an important part of the eventual Square Kilometer Array radio telescope array, which will eventually house 197 butterfly telescopes.
South African Director of the Square Kilometer Array Radio Telescope Project: Now is the moment to look to the future. This is the moment when we are building the cornerstone of radio telescopes that can be explored by humans in the next 50 years.
It is through our collaboration with our partners that we are able to initiate construction.
South African Minister of Higher Education and Science and Innovation: The participation of our partners in the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope project is very important.
Partners are committed to deepening relationships with the continent as a whole, and South Africa's partnership is also important. We also need to strengthen cooperation in science, technology, and innovation in cooperative relationships.
The Square Kilometer Array Radio Telescope is the world's largest synthetic aperture radio telescope built by multinational cooperation around the world. It is named for its total receiving area of about "1 square kilometer".
The project is expected to help humans fill in the gaps in the basic understanding of the universe, and play an important role in research fields such as gravitational waves, the detection of Einstein's theory of relativity in extreme environments, and the evolution of the universe.
