Can Africa Topple Australia in the Contest To Build the Worlds Biggest Telescope?
Physicists from across Africa gathered this week in Dakar, Senegal, for a conference focused on lasers and optics. But radio astronomy dominated the chatter in the hallways. Africa has a shot at hosting what would be the world’s largest scientific instrument, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope. The array of 1000 radio dishes will be built either in Africa or Australia. This week’s meeting in Senegal was not only the first pan-African physics conference; it also became a rally to unite scientists behind Africa’s SKA bid—and the multinational coalition of scientists have a punter’s chance that a few years ago would’ve been a major long shot. Africans weren’t the only scientists on the scene. Charles McGruder, an astronomer from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, laid out a battle plan for winning the bid. McGruder is a past president of the U.S. National Society of Black Physicists and a National Science Foundation–funded promoter of African astronomy. “We have a
