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Giant Nevada Project Could Transform Astronomy
Newser • • science
Key Points:
- Caltech has approved the final design for the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA), a $200 million radio telescope project featuring 1,650 dishes spread over 120 square miles in Nevada, aimed at scanning the sky 100 times faster than existing telescopes.
- The project, supported partly by Eric and Wendy Schmidt's philanthropic Schmidt Sciences, is expected to be completed by 2029 and will use a supercomputer to process radio signals into detailed images in real time.
- The DSA will revolutionize radio astronomy by surveying the entire visible sky multiple times in its first five years, potentially discovering about 1 billion new radio sources, compared to the 20 million found by all current radio telescopes combined.
- It will study various cosmic phenomena emitting radio signals, such as stars, galaxies, pulsars, black holes, and fast radio bursts, with all data made publicly available immediately to encourage global scientific collaboration and discovery.
- The project's open data policy aims to democratize radio astronomy research, enabling discoveries by a wide range of scientists, including students, fostering unprecedented engagement with cosmic phenomena.
