The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#2The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's an exciting time to be working in scientific computing!!
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#3"The telescope will be perhaps 10,000 times more powerful than any we currently have"
"Right now we can spot planets circling around distant stars. The SKA will be able to spot the equivalent of an airport radar system on one of those very, very distant planets."
"visitors must be prepared for, scheduled in and accounted for when looking at the data this place produces. Long before you get to Boolardy, the 346,000-hectare pastoral station on which the Murchison observatory stands, the radio-quiet restrictions start. Anyone approaching is asked to turn off all electronic devices."
Incredible that the age we live in, we section off large swaths of land just so we can read radio waves from planets so distant we will likely never visit them. I'm glad the Australian government is getting behind something like this and look forward to seeing what they uncover.
On a side note, the actual writing of the article irked me a bit as the reporter is clearly non-technical, and when I saw Moores overquoted Law get a mention it did make me reconsider the accuracy of other statements made by the writer.
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#4"The telescope will be perhaps 10,000 times more powerful than any we currently have" "Right now we can spot planets circling around distant stars. The SKA will be able to spot the equivalent of an airport radar system on one of those very, very distant planets." "visitors must be prepared for, scheduled in and accounted for when looking at the data this place produces. Long before you get to Boolardy, the 346,000-he…
It's maybe worth noting that while the space is indeed large, it's not actually used for anything much. The human impact of turning of electronic devices is negligable, given there is no cellphone reception anyway. In Karoo (where most of SKA will stand, in South Africa) they indeed turned off a few radio towers for cellphones and the site is radio-free (you can only use computers in isolated containers) but it only affected a few farmers. Asking people to turn phones off in one plane is probably far more of a hassle :-)
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#5The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
Well, that's as much because CERN doesn't need additional throughput than anything else; technically it's a solved problem, which makes it one of the easier ones to do something about :)
We can quite easily send 40Gb/s over a single fibre (I feel like I've seen over a terabit done...), and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth.
Consuming the data in a timely manner may be tricky, though!
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#6The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
CERN had a similar problem too, and the only solution was just to throw away a lot of their data. Do you expect this might happen with SKA, or is the hope that they can capture everything for later processing?
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#7The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
Well, that's as much because CERN doesn't need additional throughput than anything else; technically it's a solved problem, which makes it one of the easier ones to do something about :) We can quite easily send 40Gb/s over a single fibre (I feel like I've seen over a terabit done...), and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth. Consuming the data in a timely mann…
> and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth
Terrestrial cables are likely harder to lay: you have to worry about land access—national parks, native title, private land—and the W.A. outback is an extremely challenging environment to work in.
Getting dedicated DWDM fibre to Murchinson is a big project unto itself.
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#8"The telescope will be perhaps 10,000 times more powerful than any we currently have" "Right now we can spot planets circling around distant stars. The SKA will be able to spot the equivalent of an airport radar system on one of those very, very distant planets." "visitors must be prepared for, scheduled in and accounted for when looking at the data this place produces. Long before you get to Boolardy, the 346,000-he…
Incredible that the age we live in, we section off large swaths of land just so we can read radio waves from planets so distant we will likely never visit them.
We're not looking for places to visit. The reason we do space science (and lots of other fields of science) is that the more fundamental knowledge we have about the universe, the closer we can get to understanding how the universe is the way it is, and that makes it more likely that we'll be able to solve problems we have here on Earth.
Ignoring the fundamentals, the desire to do astronomy has lead to more than a few useful inventions. Figuring out how the sun works is the basis for our research in to fusion, which could lead to solving humanity's energy problems forever. The charge-coupled device in every camera in every smartphone was originally developed for astronomy. GPS only works because we can use satellites to track deep space objects. Aperture synthesis in MRI scanners (combining several images in to one image the size of all the cameras combined) came from combining the results from telescopes together.
A big field in Australia is a tiny price to pay for what the SKA could come up with.
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#9The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
Well, that's as much because CERN doesn't need additional throughput than anything else; technically it's a solved problem, which makes it one of the easier ones to do something about :) We can quite easily send 40Gb/s over a single fibre (I feel like I've seen over a terabit done...), and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth. Consuming the data in a timely mann…
The optical private network from CERN to the tier 1 site where I work was upgraded from 10 Gb to 40 Gb between the first and second runs of the LHC. depending on what goes on during the second run that might need to be increased again. Building high bandwidth infrastructure for use by lots of (paying!) customers is probably more viable for large corporations than it is for science, where you have a budget at the start rather than having things pay for themselves over time
The storage will need to constantly increase in that time, too.
Re: The Square Kilometre Array: Radio silence for most powerful telescope in history
#10The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
CERN had a similar problem too, and the only solution was just to throw away a lot of their data. Do you expect this might happen with SKA, or is the hope that they can capture everything for later processing?
It depends - the amounts of data involved are mammoth by today's standards, but the idea is that we will develop new methods and tools to make the project feasible. The announcement and funding of the SKA will probably help this process along too, as specific challenges are addressed throughout the programme