Earth’s Largest Telescope Soon to Scan Cosmos for Extraterrestrial Signals

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The image above shows the supermassive black hole in the core of a distant galaxy known as Cygnus A spews jets of gas into space over distances of more than 200,000 light-years. The jets (orange) were imaged by the new International Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope in Europe. The picture shows how the jets slam into the hot gas surrounding the galaxy (blue, imaged by NASA’s Chandra x-ray space telescope).

Last year, scientists in the Netherlands unveiled the largest radiotelescope in the world, saying it was capable of detecting faint signals from almost as far back as the Big Bang  as well as hunting for the first stars and galaxies and potentially signals of extraterrestrial intelligence. 

The LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) consists of 20,000 small antennas measuring between 50 centimetres and two metres across spread out across the rest of the Netherlands and also in Germany, Sweden, France and Britain, said Femke Boekhorst of the Netherlands Radioastronomy Institute.  

The array consist of banks of antennas in 48 stations hooked up by fiber optic cables. Signals from these stations will be combined using a supercomputer, transforming the array into “perhaps the most complex and versatile radio telescope ever attempted,” said Heino Falcke, chairman of the board for the International LOFAR Telescope.

(via dailygalaxy)