In all of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) excitement, we’ve forgotten that it is first and foremost a scientific instrument, created to allow scientists to answer questions that can’t be answered with existing equipment: how are galaxies created? Are there other habitable planets? What is dark matter? What is
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It is difficult to teach radio astronomy, which detects invisible radio waves, to students. It is not like optical astronomy where you can point a dish at the sky and stare at a star, says Anita Loots, associate director at Square Kilometre Array (SKA) South Africa. “The concepts are abstract because you can’t
Lengthy negotiations are underway to establish how much each country involved will pay for the first phase of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, MPs heard on Wednesday. “The big issue is the funding model,” SKA South Africa project director Bernie Fanaroff told members
Losses at state-owned Broadband Infraco have widened substantially in the past year, with revenue collapsing by 40% on account of reduced business from the company’s largest customer, Neotel. Higher staff costs and increased network maintenance costs have hit the bottom line
The National Research Foundation’s three astronomical observatories have got together to form the South African Astroinformatics Alliance (SA³) to act as a “virtual observatory”. The three facilities are the South African Astronomical Observatory, the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Square Kilometer Array
South Africa has won an international student supercomputing competition, beating world leaders China and the US. The fastest supercomputer is in China, the Tianhe-2, and runs at about 33,86 petaflops. Many countries say they intend to break the exaflop barrier in the next few decades. For some context
More than 100 years after Briton J Stuart Blackton made the first animated movie by drawing sketches on white paper, IBM Research has produced the smallest movie in the world, by creating pictures with atoms. Computers have become faster and are able to store more
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is one of the most exciting science projects of the century, project director Bernie Fanaroff said on Tuesday. “The science is as evolutionary and exciting as the work being done at Cern (European Organisation for Nuclear Research),” he told delegates at a New Age
IBM has partnered with the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (Astron) to develop high-speed but low-powered “exascale” computers that will meet the enormous demands of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope. The
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and MeerKAT radio telescope projects have been allocated R1,9bn over the next three years, according to the 2013 national budget tabled by finance minister Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday. A large portion of the international SKA project