Indian astronomers will play a critical role in the 16-nation Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), whose dish array antennas began being set up this month and which will start scanning the far corners of the universe in 2027
Having joined up in January, India is set to be a key player among 16 nations in one of the 21st century’s
grand scientific projects: humanity’s biggest-ever telescope. This confluence of radio astronomy and artificial
intelligence (AI) will help observe the births and deaths of the first stars and search for habitable planets
and extraterrestrial life.
The €2.2 billion ($2.4) Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO) is an ambitious project whose 16 member
nations also include South Africa, Australia, UK, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands,
Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
For this, India has set aside Rs 12.5 billion ($150 million) for a facility in Pune (156km east of Mumbai), a
city abuzz with radio astronomy research activity. This facility will be a regional data center equipped with
supercomputers to process the humongous amount of scientific data amassed by the telescope.
With the help of radio interferometry, astronomers can combine signals from many antennas or telescopes to
create an image that is sharper and brighter than what would be possible from a single antenna dish. This
technology effectively helps scan large swathes of the sky with radio telescope dish antennas spread many
kilometers apart but functioning as a single observatory.
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The global observatory, with thousands of units spread over two continents – in South Africa and in Western
Australia – and its nerve center in a third continent, near Manchester, England, has thousands of scientists and
engineers worldwide networking to develop innovative technologies. They will use SKAO to document cosmic data to
fill 1.5 million laptops every year.
“The idea is to start training this year (using AI to decode scientific information) with approximately two
petabytes of data archived through GMRT. We will use this to develop a small model demonstrating that India is
ready to receive and analyze the data,” Prof Yashwant Gupta, director of the National Centre for Radio
Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune, told RT.
One component of the SKAO telescope is being built in South Africa’s Karoo region, the Northern Cape Province:
an array of 197 traditional dish antennas separated by 150 km. The other half is an array of 131,072
two-meter-high Christmas-tree-like antennas in Western Australia separated by 65km. These sites were chosen far
away from human habitation to prevent the disturbance of signals.
Six stations of the 'Array Assembly 0.5', on a remote site on the traditional lands of the Australian Wajarri
Yamaji, were mounted on March 7. Components for the first six dish arrays at the Meerkat National Park in the
arid Northern Cape, arrived at the end of February and efforts are underway to assemble them by the end of
March.
SKAO will help understand the genesis of our universe, search for aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence
(SETI), spot another potentially habitable world by identifying planets similar to ours, and pick up the birth
pangs of new stars or the death throes of old ones millions of light-years away.
Astronomers worldwide estimate this observatory could pick up radio signals from every corner of the universe
for at least 50 years from when it is launched in 2027-28. Radio waves, which all heavenly bodies emit, provide
more accurate information than those carried by light (used by optical telescopes), which can be obstructed or
diverted by dust, clouds, or rain.
This observatory will thus complement ongoing research with the help of optical telescopes and ones in space
such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. The upshot is that it could throw up some
serendipitous discoveries, too.
Most prominent of all, though, is the effort to unlock the secrets of the universe through the confluence of
radio astronomy, whose foundations date back to the 1930s, and AI. The big data produced by SKAO will be an
estimated 710 petabytes (a petabyte equals one quadrillion bytes, 1015) of information every year.
Leading the pack with the design of a prototype of a regional data center are Indian radio astronomers, who are
set to use scientific evidence recorded by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) located near Pune in
India.
Prof Gupta said Indian astronomers and engineers are set to play a critical role in producing the Observatory
Monitor and Control System – the digital electronics required for signal processing at the facility in Western
Australia – and developing software for the lion’s share of SKAO systems.
“Our research organizations and the industry will get an opportunity to design and produce world-class hardware
required for SKAO,” he added.
The cue to turn to AI and other tools to learn from data to make predictions or identify heavenly bodies faster
than humans perhaps originated from NASA Frontier Development Lab (FDL)’s partnership with big-ticket firms such
as Microsoft, Google, IBM and Nvidia in Silicon Valley to solve problems in space science and forecast extreme
weather in outer space for the prevention of blackouts or damage of satellites or harm to astronauts.
With the help of this collaborative effort, the computer model DAGGER (Deep Learning Geomagnetic Perturbation)
has been developed to set off a warning 30 minutes in advance about solar storms that snap electricity
distribution and communication networks in North America, Canada and other countries close to the polar region.
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What’s more, this collaborative effort aids even in forecasting floods, Dr. Madhulika Guhathakurta, a renowned
astrophysicist and Senior Adviser at NASA Heliophysics, told RT on the sidelines of an international conference
hosted by the Astronomical Society of India in Bengaluru, last month.
She said at FDL, satellite images or data collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory and telescopes in the past
are made AI-ready to demonstrate the efficacy of forecasting Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), tons of red-hot dust,
sometimes a million tons, from the sun that travel across interplanetary space at 3,000km a second towards all
planets, scientific probes, satellites, and the earth.
“We need a large quantity of data archived from various sources to develop AI-based products,” she said. “Even
auto-calibration of instruments onboard scientific observatories, which degrade over time, is possible with the
combination of archived data and AI. It saves the cost of such auto-calibration of instruments, which otherwise
could be done through the launch of suborbital rockets with similar instruments. Virtual instruments, too, can
be created in space as a replacement for either damaged or malfunctioning sensors with the coming together of
astronomers and computer experts.”
Sci-fi or unfolding reality? Interdisciplinary teams of scientists and domain experts in AI are set to
accelerate discoveries of new habitable worlds, aliens, and new organisms existing in interplanetary space
besides rolling out products for applications like the early forecast of storms in space and on Earth, among
others, with this combination of old data and AI tools.
The mayor of Paris has reiterated her proposal that Russian and Belarusian contestants stay away from this
summer’s Olympic Games in the French capital, despite them being officially allowed to compete as neutrals.
“I want to tell the Russian and Belarusian athletes that they are not welcome in Paris,” Anne Hidalgo told
Ukrainian athletes at a training center in Kiev on Thursday, while on a visit to Ukraine.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially pushed for a complete ban on competitors from Russia and
Belarus after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. However, last December the IOC ruled that a
limited number of people from the two countries could participate as AINs (individual neutral athletes).”
Hidalgo told Reuters earlier this month that she would prefer for Russian and Belarusian contestants not to come
at all. “We cannot act as if [the Russian military operation in Ukraine] did not exist,” she told Reuters.
When asked about Israel’s Olympic participation – in the context of the Gaza war, raging since the Hamas attack
on October 7 – Hidalgo insisted there was no comparison to be made.
Sanctioning Israeli athletes is “out of the question because Israel is a democracy,” she stated.
Russia has slammed the IOC’s difference in approach to Israeli and Russian contestants. Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov has accused the Switzerland-based body of “political activism” and called its approach
self-discrediting.
The maximum numbers of Russian and Belarusian athletes that can qualify for the upcoming games are 55 and 28,
respectively. The IOC has noted that the teams are unlikely to actually meet the quota, with some 36 Russian and
22 Belarusian athletes expected to make it to the games, according to IOC director James Macleod.
Participants from the two nations can only compete in individual events, and not team sports, under a neutral
flag, and are barred from the Olympic opening ceremony.
Commenting on the restrictions faced by Russian and Belarusian competitors, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
the move “destroys Olympic ideals and discriminates against the interests of Olympians.” Such restrictions run
“absolutely contrary to the entire ideology of the Olympic movement,” he insisted.
The mayor of Paris has reiterated her proposal that Russian and Belarusian contestants stay away from this summer’s Olympic Games in the French capital, despite them being officially allowed to compete as neutrals. “I want to tell the Russian and Belarusian athletes that they are not welcome in Paris,” Anne Hidalgo told Ukrainian athletes at a training center in Kiev on Thursday, while on a visit to Ukraine. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) initially pushed for a complete ban on competitors from Russia and Belarus after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. However, last December the IOC ruled that a limited number of people from the two countries could participate as AINs (individual neutral athletes).” Hidalgo told Reuters earlier this month that she would prefer for Russian and Belarusian contestants not to come at all. “We cannot act as if [the Russian military operation in Ukraine] did not exist,” she told Reuters. When asked about Israel’s Olympic participation – in the context of the Gaza war, raging since the Hamas attack on October 7 – Hidalgo insisted there was no comparison to be made. Sanctioning Israeli athletes is “out of the question because Israel is a democracy,” she stated. Russia has slammed the IOC’s difference in approach to Israeli and Russian contestants. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the Switzerland-based body of “political activism” and called its approach self-discrediting. The maximum numbers of Russian and Belarusian athletes that can qualify for the upcoming games are 55 and 28, respectively. The IOC has noted that the teams are unlikely to actually meet the quota, with some 36 Russian and 22 Belarusian athletes expected to make it to the games, according to IOC director James Macleod. Participants from the two nations can only compete in individual events, and not team sports, under a neutral flag, and are barred from the Olympic opening ceremony. Commenting on the restrictions faced by Russian and Belarusian competitors, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the move “destroys Olympic ideals and discriminates against the interests of Olympians.” Such restrictions run “absolutely contrary to the entire ideology of the Olympic movement,” he insisted.