www.ska.edu.au

Well, there are a lot of telescopes out there, but the SKA will be much more powerful and sensitive. It will be able to see further than ever before.

We don’t know what it will find because we can’t see that far at the moment! It’s like how you’ve no idea what cool stuff is in your neighbour’s backyard until you’ve got the ladder and looked over the fence. You need to have the technology before you can start discovering things.

The Universe is a lot bigger than your neighbor's backyard - there could be a lot of stuff out there.

We don’t know what we’ll find, but we know what we’re hoping we’ll learn more about. What should we look for?

And think of what else we might get from it.

Radio Astronomy has already had some great spin-offs such as medical imaging technology like MRI scanners, satellite TV and the technology that allows emergency call centers to locate a caller to within 150 metres based on the arrival times of their phone signal at different mobile phone towers.

Before we can build the SKA, first we have to develop a lot of stuff to make it work, so we’ll also see advances in technologies for renewable energy, computers, digital networks, software and stacks more.

We think we need it. What do you think?