A cluster of structures spread across the deserts of Western Australia and South Africa will become the world’s largest radio observatory, expected to find evidence of alien civilizations.

According to The Guardian, construction of the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory called the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) has officially begun in Australia after 3 decades of preparation. The groundbreaking ceremony for the first segment of the whole system – SKA-Low in Australia – was just held on December 5.

SKA is hailed as the largest scientific project of the century, developed by the Australian government with the goal of helping scientists look deep into space billions of light years away to understand the early period of space history. universe, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

It will also be used to learn about dark energy and why the universe is expanding. Another long-awaited goal is the search for alien life.

According to Space, the SKA system will initially include two large telescope arrays, the SKA-Mid array, located in the Karoo desert in South Africa, and the SKA-Low array, located in the Western Australian desert, north of Perth.

The SKA-Mid array in the Karoo will scan the sky for radio sources in the mid-frequency range from 350 MHz to 15.4 GHz using 197 dishes, each 15 meters in diameter. The SKA-Low array in Australia will rely on 131,072 dipole antennas to detect radio waves ranging in frequency from 50 to 350 MHz.

Radio waves, which have much longer wavelengths than visible light, penetrate dust and debris, allowing astronomers to observe regions of space obscured by other types of observatories. That’s why radio observatories can see into remote, hidden places that other types of observatories can’t.

According to Ms. Catherine Cesarsky, Chairwoman of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) board, this space remote sensing facility will create a new revolution in astronomical research. It is also environmentally friendly as most of its power comes from renewable resources.

Due to the extreme sensitivity of the antennas, the arrays need to be placed in remote locations where the use of conventional radio receivers is prohibited to avoid signal interference.

The world’s largest radio observatory is currently ALMA located in Chile’s Antacama desert.