For many decades, Africa has
often been perceived as a place of hunger, famine and disease, where
the only valuable form of research should be in food security and
health. In this (mis) representation of Africa, the proponents hold
the view that Africa is not a place for world-class science and
research, but a destination for brief, small scale, short-term
targeted projects without longterm returns, and a dumpsite 'market'
for obsolete and third-class goods and electronics. I refuse to buy
into this. Whereas most Africa nations lack enough resources and
strong commitment to promote good science, some credit must, however,
be given wherever it's due. Africa has woken up and a big tornado is
on it's way, one that will swallow the pessimists still engraved
in the past! And moreover, if the technological, infrastructural and
economic gains made in the last decade are anything to go by, plus the recently won "African World Cup" that will see construction of the world's largest radio telescope in
African soil, then it seems to be indeed business unusual that big science is making it's way to Africa!
In Kenya for example,
technological fingerprints are already available for everyone-who
cares- to see. From the highly innovative mobile money transfer
system M-pesa, mobile technological applications such as
M-shamba, M-banking et cetera, to the hi-tech 'seeding'
labs being established in preparation for the envisioned Konza
technology city, argued to be the next Africa's Silicon Savanna and the
now available government funding towards innovative research, Kenya
is-despite a few challenges-, indeed showing signs of the required
momentum necessary to turn her into a regional and African technology and educational hub.
However, in this article, I discuss a special form of big science that is making it's way to Africa, and which, harbors a huge potential in transforming Africa into an international
scientific hub and a competitive partner in world-class scientific research. First
things first, let me begin with the basics. The science of astronomy
allows us to look back in time to the beginning of the Cosmos because the light from distant stars,
galaxies and other objects in the universe takes a long time to
journey through space before reaching our telescopes (us). We therefore see
these distant objects (today) as they were very long time ago; astronomically
speaking, “we look back in time”. What this means is that if
something was to happen to the Sun now (let's say it switches off!) we
can only know this after eight minutes because light from the Sun takes
8 minutes to reach the Earth. We say that the distance to the Sun is
eight light minutes. On the other hand, if you wanted to see
the nearest star Proxima Centauri as it is now, then you will
need to stand and remain where you are for 4 years, because it's only
by then that the light emitted today would have arrived! You can then
agree with me that by then you would already be four years behind and
hence lagging back in time. This is the same principle that
astronomers apply to know about everything else in the universe.
As
many of you might already know from international news, following
months of a highly energized contest between the bids of South Africa
and it's 8 African partner countries among them; Kenya, Namibia,
Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana, Madagascar and Mauritius, and,
Australia jointly with New Zealand, a landmark breath-taking decision
was made last month that saw Africa chosen to host about a third of what would be the
world's largest radio telescope, the
Square Kilometer Array
(abbreviated as SKA) with Australia and New Zealand hosting the remaining part.
What
is the SKA?
The SKA will be a revolutionary
radio telescope that will be used to make pictures of radio waves
instead of light waves, and will consist of thousands of radio wave
receptor elements called “antennas”, distributed across the
continent, linked together by a highly sophisticated technique in
radio astronomy called interferometry-that itself worn a Nobel prize
in physics.
The antennae or dishes of the
SKA, will be spread across the African continent, across to Australia
and New Zealand, so that the sum of effective collecting area of the
antennae will be equivalent to a single dish having an aperture with
an area of one million square meters, making it the largest and most
sensitive radio telescope ever built, and over 50 times more
sensitive and will allow mapping of the sky more than one thousand
times greater faster than the world's largest instruments. .
The
Technology of the SKA
To increase it's sensitivity and
help provide high resolution images of stars, galaxies and other
astronomical objects, the SKA will employ a very special design that will see a concentration of most antennae in a central core while the
rest will be arranged to form a spiral pattern such that the spacing
will gradually increase from the central core outwards.
The
kind of science that will be done by the SKA
The SKA will detect signals in
the radio frequency band from space. It will provide astronomers with
an insight to: how the first stars and galaxies formed, how magnetic
fields formed in the early universe and how this influenced galaxy
formation, the nature of dark matter (the non-interacting invisible
form of matter that forms about 25% of the universe) and dark energy
(the mysterious form of energy that is tearing the universe apart and
forms about 74% of the universe), test the famous Einstein's theory
of general relativity and hence the nature of gravity, and, last but
not least, search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
How
much will it cost?
The total approximate budget for
the SKA is about 1,500 million Euros, but it could be more
How
will Africa benefit from the SKA?
The design, development,
construction and operation of the SKA will be done in collaboration
with local and selected foreign industries, likely to foster skills transfer
and development of local industries and skilled manpower.
Being an international project,
the SKA will attract world top scientists and expatriates to Africa hence not only leading to the much needed skills transfer into the continent but also attracting back some of the Africa's top scientists abroad.
Governments will be compelled to
train a massive number of engineers, astronomers, software engineers,
mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and technicians which will
boost the amount of skilled manpower.
The massive data handling,
transfer, processing and storage will require high performance
supercomputers and very fast internet leading to improved internet
speeds, data handling and signal processing technologies and
interconnectivity.
