Deep in the Australian outback, one of the world’s biggest science experiments is being constructed — a ‘time machine’ that’s also capable of finding aliens.

It sounds like science fiction, but we’re assured the technology is legitimate.

“What we’re building here is essentially a time machine because it lets us look back to that early dawn of the universe and understand how it’s evolved,” Dr Sarah Pearce told 7.30.

“That’s about 300 million years after the Big Bang, when the very first stars and galaxies started to shine.”

Dr Pearce is the Telescope Director of SKA-Low, a giant radio telescope made up of 131,072 Christmas-tree-shaped antennas being built to scan the darkest depths of the universe, and is expected to be fully operational by the end of this decade.

It will test Einstein’s theory of general relativity by investigating gravity around black holes.

It’s so sensitive, that essentially if E.T.  did have an iPhone, they would find him.

“Because it’s the most sensitive [telescope] ever built, if there is intelligent life in a different star system, for the first time we’d be able to detect the leakage from their electronics.”

Dr Pearce doesn’t think we are.

Bigger is better

The scale of the instrument they’ll be using to answer those big questions is hard to fathom, especially in person.

By road it can take hours to drive from one end to the other, a distance of 74km as the crow — or the local zebra finch — flies.

“It’s a bit like having one big telescope that’s 74km wide,” Dr Pearce said.

SKA-Low is one of two telescopes being built by the SKA Observatory (SKAO), a global intergovernmental organisation formed in 2021, with 16 member countries across five continents.

The other telescope, called SKA-Mid — an array of 197 dishes — is spread across 150 kilometres in a radio-quiet zone at the Northern Cape of South Africa.

Construction is estimated to extend into the next decade, at a cost exceeding $2 billion – funded by the member countries.

In total, close to 100 organisations across 20 countries including Australia, which is a founding member, have been involved in the design and development of the SKA project.

512 ‘stations’, each with 256 antennas, and a ‘core’ just over 500 metres in diameter, will survey the sky. A series of supercomputers on and off-site will process the data.

It’s estimated SKA-Low will be 1,000 times more sensitive than the telescope that produced this image — the first radio-colour picture of the cosmos.

“In that [image] you’re seeing hundreds of thousands of radio galaxies, supermassive black holes, millions of light years away,” Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker told 7.30.

The renowned astronomer made the discovery in 2016 using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a nearby radio telescope with a web of 4,000 spider-like antennas. 

“They’re looking at things that are millions to billions of light years away, which means we’re looking millions to billions of years back in time,” she said.

“Before we did that survey we didn’t know what the sky looked like at those frequencies, it’s really like pathfinding into the unknown.”

The MWA was one of two radio telescopes built to prove the case for SKA-Low’s construction in Australia.

The other is called ASKAP — made up of 36 dishes.

“It’s designed and built here in Australia, and it’s a one-off, a world first in what it does,” ASKAP Principal Engineer Brett Hiscock told 7.30.

“Rather than just pointing at one spot in space, it’s actually making 36 beams, so it’s looking at the sky faster because it’s looking at 36 places at once.”

“[In] one of the recent surveys they’ve found 1 million new galaxies.”

Mr Hiscock explained to 7.30 that radio waves are used to help map the universe.

“It’s not something you look through, it’s using radio waves that’s coming from objects like black holes or just gases in space, and we’re collecting those radio waves and processing that information to produce contour maps that scientists will study and try to understand the universe,” he said.

Wajarri Country 

Building something so big and sensitive required lots of space, and (radio) silence.

You’ll find all of the above 700km north of Perth on Wajarri Country, at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.

“Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara is actually Wajarri language for ‘sharing the sky and stars’,” says Rebecca Wheadon, CSIRO Observatory Manager.

“These telescopes have a Wajarri name and when new discoveries are made they’ll also have a Wajarri name, so wherever we can we look to share the beautiful culture.”

Negotiations, including heritage surveys with the Wajarri Yamaji — the traditional landholders and native titleholders — took years before construction began.

“To get to that agreement we spent six years walking side by side on this land here to find the right locations for a number of telescopes that have now been built,” Ms Wheadon said.

“One of the things that’s been special with us is the sharing of language and culture, and we’re always looking for ways to continue walking side by side on land,” she said.

Proud Wajarri Woman, Gail Simpson told 7.30 “it’s the best partnership we’ve got”.

“The connecting back to land is one of the things that’s great, but doing the heritage surveys and protecting out there is one of the boss things going.

“If they were to go through like the mining companies and destroy everything then we’ve got nothing left.”

SKA-Low Director Dr Sarah Pearce said she was “enormously grateful” for the permission to use the land.

“We’ve been working in deep partnership with CSIRO and Wajarri together, this is a really important partnership for us to demonstrate how these cutting-edge technology can be done in partnership with First Nations people,” she said.

‘Filled my heart’

A majority of the field technicians — part of a workforce of more than 200 people — who install the SKA-Low antennas, are proud Wajarri.

“I get a special feeling working on land where my ancestors have been and not everyone can say they’re working out in the middle of nowhere,” field technician Lockie Ronan told 7.30.

“People look out and see it’s a desolate place, nothing out there, but what I see is an abundance of life, the trees, native animals, it’s such an important thing to me and I think it’s very beautiful.”

In a moment of serendipity while working on site, he learned one of the ASKAP telescopes was named after his grandfather — a prominent community member.

When he saw the dish for the first time it filled him with joy.

“How involved my grandfather was in the community makes me want to push young Indigenous kids to come out, reconnect with culture and hopefully experience the same feelings I get to feel today.

“It’s beyond stoked, it’s such a beautiful feeling.

“It’s like a longing that’s being filled, and it’s not completely filled, I think it’s just the start, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here.”

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