Namibia joins efforts in building world's largest radio telescope

Source: Xinhua| 2017-09-01 01:53:51|Editor: yan
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WINDHOEK, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Namibia says it will host four Square Kilometer Array (SKA) remote stations in the quest to join the rest of the globe in building the world's largest radio telescope, with over a square kilometer of data collecting area.

Namibia's Permanent Secretary of Higher Education, Alfred Van Kent, in a statement on Thursday said the project will eventually use thousands of dishes and up to a million antennas to enable astronomers to monitor the sky in new detail and survey the entire sky much faster than any system currently in existence.

Van Kent said at the SKA Africa project at the 14th Ministerial meet held on Aug. 24 in Ghana, an agreement of nine countries that included, Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia, was inked.

According to him, the agreement is in accordance with cabinets decision of Oct. 11 2011 that gave its endorsement to Namibia to partake in the SKA project.

According to Van Kent, the benefits of the project to the country will include frontier research being conducted in astronomy, astrophysics, high performance computing, with which major events being explained in understanding galaxies and the big bang theories, among others.

Furthermore he said economic benefits will also arise with the construction and operation of the SKA facilities as well as hosting other big science and innovation projects, as a country.

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