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Key
science projects
The SKA science impact will be extraordinary.
Recently the SKA’s International Science Advisory Committee
(ISAC) has agreed upon five principal science drivers against whose
requirements any technical design must be tested.
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The cradle of life
There is increasing
interest in the community in astrobiology and in the search
for Earth-like planets. The SKA has the unique potential for
finding evidence of extra-solar terrestrial planets and of other
life like us.
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>Strong
field tests of gravity using pulsars and black holes
Pulsar surveys with the SKA can discover
tens of thousands of pulsars, amongst which we expect to find
a pulsar in orbit around a stellar-mass black hole and pulsars
in close orbit around the super-massive black hole at the Galactic
Centre. more...
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> The
origin and evolution of Cosmic Magnetism
Radio astronomy is uniquely placed in
its capability to study magnetic fields at great distances.
Large-scale polarimetric studies will allow us to completely
characterize the evolution of magnetic fields in galaxies,
clusters and the inter-galactic medium; to investigate the
connection between the formation of magnetic fields and the
formation of structure in the early Universe, and to provide
solid constraints on when and how the first magnetic fields
in the Universe were generated. more...
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Galaxy evolution, cosmology and dark energy
The original motivation for building the
SKA was to detect HI in normal galaxies at high redshift. Such
an experiment promises a particularly exciting result, in that
the vast volume of space probed by an SKA HI galaxy survey will
provide an exquisite matter power spectrum, with which we can
compute the Universe's Equation of State, and map out the strength
of Dark Energy as a function of cosmic epoch. At the same time,
the SKA's unique capability to observe the neutral atomic component
of gas in galaxies will allow us to chart the kinematics, merger
history and environment of ordinary galaxies as they evolve
from redshifts z~5 to the present. more...
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> Probing
the Dark Ages
The ensemble of the
data collected by SKA can provide unique information on how
the first galaxies and black holes assembled themselves, and
how they influenced their environment. more... |
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SKA science
An overview
of the projects identified as being the key science drivers
for the SKA
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