Bernie Fanaroff, project director of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, said the SKA project will be looking for intelligent life on other planets and organic molecules.
“We want to look for organic molecules, the molecules of life out in space and, of course, we want to look for extraterrestrial intelligence,” Fanaroff told delegates in Johannesburg while attending a New Age breakfast.
According to Fanaroff, the SKA telescope is so sensitive, should a person be sitting on a planet orbiting a star 50 light years away from Earth and pointed the SKA telescope towards Earth, they would see “all the airport radars, TV transmitters and SABC programmes”.
Fanaroff added: “If we have it on Earth and we are looking out at all these stars and new planets which are being discovered, we hope to be able to see if there is a civilisation out there that is broadcasting,” provided the civilisation is within a 50 light year radius and has developed to a similar level, or beyond Earth’s technological level.
Before the SKA project can start searching for alien civilisations, construction has to be completed, which is scheduled to begin in 2017.
Most of the project will be built in Africa, which includes the full dish array and the dense aperture array. Western Australia will house the sparse aperture array.
Fanaroff said the SKA project, on a global scale, has 10 member countries as well as four guest countries.
He said the “very substantial” costs would be shared by all the countries involved with the project however, “we are still waiting to hear for contributions from Germany and India.”
Fanaroff said he hoped the United States would get on board by 2020.
