Kiran Chug of the Dominion Post reports on the joint NZ-Australia bid to be a part of the ‘world’s biggest science project’.
The bid, in competition with South Africa, is for the Square Kilometer Array – a giant set of telescopes which would be used to gather data about the universe. A conference is being help in Auckland this week in which scientists will tlak with each other about the Australasian bid
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“The project would use about 5000 telescopes in Western Australia and New Zealand to gather data from the outer reaches of the universe.
“Project head Sergei Gulyaev said a decision on which bid had been successful would be made in 2012. He believed recent research by Australian and New Zealand scientists working on the project would boost their case.
“The developments, to be unveiled at next week’s conference, would enable data collected from the telescopes to be used to help scientists understand more about Earth and use the information for earthquake prediction. “We will be mapping the universe to map the Earth.””