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Johannesburg/Canberra - Deadly rivals on the rugby field,
cricket pitch and in the underground mining sector, South Africa and Australia
are now squaring off in a new contest: to win the right to host the world's
most powerful telescope.
The duo are finalists in a tender to host the device, known
as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be 50 times more sensitive and
10 000 times faster than any other telescope on the planet, according to the
international consortium funding the €2bn ($2.66bn) project.
The fight has turned nasty, with South Africa accusing
Australia of dirty tricks and Australians raising security concerns about
building such an expensive project in South Africa, which has high rates of
violent crime.
South Africa has even accused Australia of "selectively
leaking" data about what are supposed to be secret deliberations in order
to boost its own bid.
Reports in Australian media suggest South Africa may have
the upper hand with the consortium behind the telescope favouring its bid less
for the science and more for the economic impact the project will have for
emerging African economies.
"While claiming to respect the integrity of the
selection process, this is a not very subtle attempt to undermine the
scientific and technical rigour of the site adjudication process, by suggesting
that the reported superiority of the South African bid was nothing more than a
'sympathy decision'," South Africa's science mMinistry said last week.
The Sydney Morning Herald last month reported that a panel
of experts had recommended South Africa as host, with Australia - in a joint
bid with New Zealand - failing to convince the panel.
"We think we've got a superior case and we're going to
keep arguing and pushing it until the decision is made and we're hopeful that
we can still win the site selection," Australian Senator Chris Evans said
last week at a news conference.
South African officials said it has the scientific know-how
and technical capability to host the project, which would extend to other
African countries.
Sheep and kangaroos hold sway
The Britain-based consortium behind the telescope includes
Canada, China, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom as well as
Australia and South Africa.
Spokesperson Jo Bowler told Reuters in London that
deliberations will begin at a meeting in the British capital this week, but
that the group is unlikely to make a swift decision.
"It's very unlikely we would get a decision this week,
although it's possible that we may get a decision sometime in the next few
months," she said.
There are also indications the global financial crisis may
hit funding.
The SKA is not an optical telescope. It will use 3 000
receptors to detect radio frequency signals from deep space that will then be
processed by a super computer with the processing power of about 1 billion
personal computers.
The name comes from the surface area of all the receptors,
which will total one square kilometre. Its antennas and receptors will be
arranged in a five-pronged pinwheel stretching for thousands of kilometres from
a hub located in as remote a place as possible so that it is free from radio
interference and able to pick up signals from the deepest reaches of the
universe.
"The SKA will give astronomers insight into the
formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, the
role of cosmic magnetism, the nature of gravity, and possibly even life beyond
Earth," the consortium said.
Both countries already boast world class astronomy.
South Africa hosts the Southern African Large Telescope, the
largest of its sort in the southern hemisphere. Australia is home to the Deep
Space Network tracking station near Canberra used by the US space agency Nasa.
Both locations are also sparsely inhabited.
The are far more sheep on South Africa's proposed central site and far more kangaroos on Australia's than people.
