WESTERN Australia is developing a name as a hub for astronomy research, with international consortiums asking the state to host some of the world’s major projects in the field.
WESTERN Australia is developing a name as a hub for astronomy research, with international consortiums asking the state to host some of the world’s major projects in the field.
The California Institute of Technology – the US founder of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project – has offered WA a chance to partner in hosting a gravitational wave detector, which will help scientists learn more about the universe.
The LIGO project will join other established astronomy projects in WA, including the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope and the Murchison Wide Field Array, both located 200 kilometres east of Meekatharra.
The two telescopes were built in a bid to beat South Africa to secure the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope in history, the $2 billion Square Kilometre Array.
The state and federal governments have already invested almost $350 million to develop SKA-related infrastructure and research capacity to support the SKA bid, a final decision on which will be made by the first half of 2012.
The US LIGO laboratory has agreed to transfer to Australia a $140 million gravitational wave detector, provided the federal government funds the construction of a vacuum to house the detector and pays for the operational costs of the detector for the next decade.
The government must make a commitment to fund the $140 million construction costs and $60 million operational costs by October of this year.
The huge detectors are situated around the world in the US, France, the UK and Japan, with the next detector to complete the global matrix to be situated at the Wallingup Plain, west of Gingin.
A consortium of five universities from around Australia, including the University of Western Australia, submitted a proposal last month to Science Minister Kim Carr outlining the scientific and industry benefits of the LIGO project.
Australian International Gravitational Observatory director and UWA professor, David Blair, said these detectors could reveal more about the universe than any other form of astronomy.
“It’s currently the biggest physics project in America, and the US got funding to build three of these detectors but they only have two vacuum systems, so they want to put the third detector in Australia,” Professor Blair said.
“All of these detectors combined act like an ear that can listen to everything that is going on with black holes in the universe, and will also listen to the birth of the universe itself, which is beyond the reach of ordinary astronomy.”
Supporters of the LIGO project say there will be a number of spin-off benefits from the application of the technology.
These include the advancement of optics, lasers, high-vacuum welding, vibration isolation, and digital signal processing and data visualisation, all of which have important uses in the WA mining and resources sector.
Professor Blair said the Gravity Centre of Western Australia had recently initiated talks with Science Minister John Day and has asked the state government to support the federal government in the funding of the project.
“It’s early days and the federal government has been distracted with Queensland floods so we realise that the project has come along at a bad time, but one thing I can say is that this is the biggest international scientific investment ever offered to Australia,” he said.
