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ECONOMIST: "THE idea for the world’s most powerful radio telescope, capable of seeing back nearly to the origins of the universe, has been around for some time. Known as the Square Kilometre Array, or SKA—as that was originally planned to be the total collecting area of its thousands of dish-shaped antennae—it was conceived of by an international group of astronomers in the early 1990s. No construction has yet begun. Indeed, no site has yet been chosen. However, in the vast quietness of the Karoo, a semi-desert in South Africa, a small prototype is already operating and its first images are, by all accounts, remarkable.
"The Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) consists of seven steerable dishes, each 12 metres across. As such, it is already the most powerful array-based telescope in Africa. It is, though, merely a test bed for MeerKAT, a device that will consist of 64 somewhat larger dishes and will be the most powerful instrument in the southern hemisphere as well as one of the three most sensitive in the world.
"The SKA will dwarf these minnows. It will be 50-100 times more powerful than any predecessor, and will be able to peer back through time almost to the Big Bang itself, exploring the formation of the first stars and galaxies, the role of magnetism in the early cosmos, what exactly dark matter and dark energy are, the nature of gravity, whether intelligent life has ever existed anywhere other than on Earth, and the validity of such fundamental scientific concepts as Einstein’s theory of relativity. The world’s astronomers are, understandably, fizzing with excitement."
I don't quite know about "fizzing," but I know astronomers that are pretty excited about this. As you'll see when you click the link, it boils down to m-o-n-e-y, and the political will to invest in the future.
The Economist: All squared: A new radio telescope may catalyse African science
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