The Future Of Astronomy: Thousands Of Radio Telescopes That Can See Beyond The Stars
“Radio astronomy has brought us pulsars, quasars, microquasars, and mysterious sources like Cygnus X-1, which turned out to be black holes. The entire Universe is out there, waiting for us to discover it. When SKA is completed, it will shed a light on the Universe beyond stars, galaxies, and even gravitational waves. It will show us the invisible Universe as it truly is.”
When we break out the big guns -- space telescopes like Hubble or James Webb -- we can see the Universe as it was billions of years ago, if we look for long enough. From the first moment that the Universe forms stars and galaxies, so long as that light has a path to our eyes, humanity can view it with the right equipment. This record-breaking approach has brought us in contact with galaxies from as early as when the Universe was just 400 million years old: 3% of its current age. Yet no matter how far back we go, we’ll never be able to see the era from before there were stars or galaxies at all using this approach. But a new, ambitious project just might. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA), set to begin construction next year, will map out the invisible hydrogen in the Universe, including during the epochs in where there are no stars at all.
In the truest sense, these thousands of radio telescopes, working together, will reveal the invisible Universe at long last. Come find out how!
