Square Kilometre Array

Imagine a telescope that can see back almost to the beginning of time. A telescope that is 50 times more powerful than any other, one that can scan the skies 10,000 times faster than ever before. A telescope that will lead to endless discoveries and help unravel some of the biggest mysteries of the universe.

The University of Calgary is the lead Canadian institution on a C$3-billion international project called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). It will be the largest radio telescope ever built and will be used to study naturally occurring radio emissions from the edge of the universe to a distant time before stars and galaxies were formed.

The telescope will be made up of an array of tens of thousands of radio antenna receiving stations with a total area of one million square metres collecting radio waves from the universe. One of the big challenges will be processing the scads of signals from deep space collected by the radio receivers and analyzing the data.