To the dawn of time

Dr. Adrian Tiplady, astronomer, engineer and accomplished jazz musician, is a key member of the team working to have the most ambitious radio telescope in history — the Square Kilometre Array — built in South Africa and other African countries. Earlier this month he showed us round the Hart Radio Astronomy Observatory in the Magaliesberg, where a prototype (pictured) for one of the 4500 receiver dishes expected to comprise SKA is currently collecting data on pulsars. Click below to hear him describe the project, its precursor, Meerkat, already under construction in the Karoo, what SKA means for South Africa and why he believes we will win the right to host it. In an extraordinary swords-to-ploughshares story, South Africa , he says, has gone from “a small, surprise upstart to a dominant player in the whole global consortium” working on SKA.