SKA = Super Koolness Ahead

Following three decades of planning and negotiations, construction began yesterday in Australia and South Africa on the world’s largest telescope, called the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

☝️ First things first: The SKA is a radio telescope, which is different from the optical telescopes you may have at home. Radio scopes study wavelengths of light that are outside the visual spectrum, called – wait for it – radio signals.

• This allows them to detect otherwise invisible gasses in space, as well as peer into whole new areas that optical scopes can’t see due to cosmic dust getting in the way.

And the SKA is also set to be pretty B-I-G. By the time construction is finished in 2028, the telescope will cover an area of 1 square kilometer (247 acres) across South Africa and Australia. The large distances between antennas, combined with their sheer number (131,000+), mean it’ll will pick up radio signals from outer space with “unprecedented sensitivity,” per Nature.

❓ Which is important for what comes next: The $2.1 billion SKA project, a joint venture between eight nations with others currently on the path to join, was designed to investigate some of the biggest questions in astrophysics – including the origins of hydrogen and the search for extraterrestrial life. And once live, it’ll also be able to perform the most precise tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity in history.