PERTH: Australia is playing a key role in the world’s biggest search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
An Australian radio telescope in operation for more than 50 years will be one of the primary instruments used in a new $100m (A$137m; £64m) search for life elsewhere in space.
The 10-year project – known as the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) – was announced this week by Prof Stephen Hawking in London, and is being funded by Russian billionaire and venture capitalist Yuri Milner.
One of the two main radio telescopes being used in the search is a 64-metre-wide parabolic dish known as the Parkes telescope.
The facility, 380km (236 miles) west of Sydney, belongs to Australia’s national science organisation, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
A multi-million dollar agreement has been worked out that will give project scientists access to 25% of the telescope’s time over the next five years, says Lewis Ball, chief of CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science unit.
