The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, or ASKAP, with its 36 dishes, is a precursor to the gigantic SKA telescope. Photo: Veronika Meduna
The Murchison Widefield Array looks like an army of spider-like aliens. Photo: Veronika Meduna
In the middle of the Australian outback, an hour’s drive from the nearest homestead, scientists are building the world’s largest telescope. There is no internet, no mobiles phones, no wifi - and the few people who work at the site live behind double doors in an office that has been wrapped in metal sheets to act as a Faraday cage. Veronika Meduna visits the Square Kilometre Array site to find out how this radio-quiet zone will allow the dishes and antennae to tune into the faintest radio hum from the universe in search of alien life and the cosmic dawn.
