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Learners urged to enter SKA competition

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7 February 2012

The Department of Science and Technology is calling on learners from grades 8 to 11 to enter a competition aimed at raising awareness of South Africa's bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Learners have only to answer a few easy questions about the SKA to stand a chance of winning laptops, printers, digital cameras and organised tours to their nearest astronomy observatory.

South Africa, allied with eight other African countries, is competing against Australia (allied with New Zealand) to host the SKA, a mega radio telescope consisting of about 3 000 dish-shaped antennae with a combined collecting area of roughly one square kilometre.

At between 50 to 100 times more sensitive than any existing radio telescope, the SKA will be able to probe the edges of our universe, and help us to answer fundamental questions about the laws of nature and physics, including the study of so-called "dark energy" and "dark matter".

It will be a powerful virtual time machine, enabling scientists to "go back in time" to explore the origins of the first galaxies, stars and planets. If there is life somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, the SKA will help us find it.

If Africa wins the bid, the core of the telescope will be constructed in Carnarvon in the Karoo region of the Northern Cape, with outlying telescope stations in other parts of South Africa as well as Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Namibia and Zambia.

More information, and entry forms, are available on the SKA South Africa website www.ska.ac.za, the SA Agency for Science and Technology Advancement site www.saasta.ac.za and the Department of Science and Technology site www.dst.gov.za.

Entries marked "MeerKAT-SKA Schools Competition" may be posted to PO Box 1758, Pretoria, 0001, or delivered to SAASTA, Didacta Building, 211 Skinner Street, Pretoria.

The competition closes on 31 March 2012.

For more information about the competition, e-mail Anacletta Koloko at anacletta@saasta.ac.za.

Source: BuaNews



	Artist's impression of the core of the Square Kilometre Array. The full facility will comprise around 3 000 antennas with a combined collecting area of roughly one square kilometre (Image © Swinburne Astronomy Productions / Square Kilometre Array)