EYES ON SPACE: South Africa’s KAT-7 telescope, a seven-dish array in the Karoo. PHOTO: ESA ALEXANDER
Research chair in theoretical particle cosmology at Wits University, Vishnu Vejjala, said the $2-billion (about R17-billion) SKA was simply too large a project to win Nobel prizes.
“Large experiments these days are disadvantaged when it comes to winning Nobel prizes. You have thousands of people working on one project. The Nobel is usually awarded to teams of three people at most.”
The measure of success for the SKA would be the way it resolved outstanding problems in physics – like how galaxies were formed and secrets around “dark matter”, Vejjala said.
Other projects and satellite missions are collecting similar data, but the real benefit of the SKA telescope will be the scale of information it picks up.
SA will construct two of the three SKA receiver components. The main site will be outside Carnarvon in the Karoo.
Revulshionary
The main object of the SKA will be to find if there is INTELLIGENT life out there…
And to think… this PROJECT will start in Africa….
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Article source: http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2012/05/29/ska-to-unlock-dark-secrets-but-unlikely-to-win-a-nobel