DW: Mr. Steinmetz, what kind of discoveries do astronomers hope to see from the SKA?
Matthias Steinmetz: One of the big questions we hope to address with the SKA is what happened during the dark ages of the universe. By this we usually refer to the period of the universe when it was less than one billion years old.
How can uncovering the mysteries of billions of years ago help us today in our modern world?
It is that early period when the universe basically took it’s shape. It was that period when stars, planets and galaxies were formed out of nothing.
And how does that affect us today?
In the end, we humans would like to know where we come from. And that knowledge will tell us how our current universe came into being.
A lot of money is being pumped into the SKA project. (1.5 billion Euros). Why is it so expensive?
It is a huge array of 3010 antennas over a vast area of space and they need to be connected to modern, high-performance Internet connections, they need to be powered. We don't have the technology in hand at the moment and that costs money.
The decision of where this project would be based was hotly contested. In the end it was divided between South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Was that just a political decision - or does it make scientific sense to have this project divided across two continents?
I think there's a political component to it, of course. But there is also a good scientific reason to split a telescope because South Africa and Australia both have their particularities which are good for the project. Having both together, one can combine the benefits of both sides.
The world's most powerful optical telescope, the so-called European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is one step closer to being built in Chile. Will this enhance or compete with the SKA?
It will enhance the SKA, because optical telescopes tell you mainly about the stars and galaxies. How they form and what they are made of. Radio telescopes look at a different range of wavelengths, looking at the pristine gas that is about to form stars and galaxies. So with both we have the unborn stars and the born stars and can analyze both at the same time.