News location:

Canberra Today 16°/18° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

New technology helps scientists see into deep space

A TEAM of Australian scientists, including researchers from ANU, have found a new way to use the telecommunications network to synchronise radio telescopes, which help scientists peer into deep space. 

Prof Ken Baldwin
Linking radio telescopes in an array currently requires that each telescope has access to an atomic clock to record the precise time when a signal is detected from an object in space.

Co-lead researcher Prof Ken Baldwin from ANU says the team demonstrates, for the first time, that a stable frequency reference can be reliably transmitted more than 300 kilometres over the fibre optic network to link two radio telescopes.

“The new technology we’ve developed could be particularly useful for the Square Kilometre Array, a global effort to detect faint radio waves from deep space with a sensitivity about 50 times greater than that of the Hubble telescope,” he says.

“This highly stable method for transmitting the frequency reference promises to replace the need for expensive atomic clocks, which cost around two hundred thousand dollars each.”

Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope using arrays in Australia and South Africa. Individual radio telescopes will be linked to create a total collecting area of about 1 million square metres.

“The new technique doesn’t require any substantial changes to the rest of the fibre optic network and is easy to implement,” Prof Baldwin says.

“By running the experiment on optical fibres also carrying normal traffic, we showed that transmitting the stable frequency standard doesn’t affect the data or telephone calls on the other channels.

“This is necessary to gain the cooperation of the telecommunications companies that own these fibre networks.”

ANU conducted the research with Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet), CSIRO, the National Measurement Institute, Macquarie University and the University of Adelaide. The research is published in “Optica”.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews