Western Australia is being considered as the location for two scientific research projects of global importance, which may have significant benefits for local businesses and industry.
Western Australia is being considered as the location for two scientific research projects of global importance, which may have significant benefits for local businesses and industry.
The Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy (ACIGA) last week launched its prospectus for a $100 million gravitational wave observatory to be built at Gingin by 2014.
WA is also one of two locations being considered to host a $1.8 billion radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, which will collect radio waves emitted by objects in space, allowing scientists to better understand the laws of physics.
The observatory prospectus was launched in Perth at the University of Western Australia by vice-chancellor Alan Robson, with simultaneous presentations held in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra.
The Australian International Gravitational Observatory (AIGO) will be the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and will have an increased sensitivity in detecting gravitational waves, due to two record-length five-kilometre stainless steel tunnels, or ‘arms’, used in wave detection.
Professor David Blair, of the UWA school of physics, said the observatory would allow scientists to detect gravitational waves at a greater frequency than was currently achieved by observatories in the US, Japan and Europe.
“For the first time, this detector, along with the others in the world when they are upgraded to the sensitivity we propose, will be able to give the human race bionic ears to allow us to listen to the sounds of the universe; at the moment we’re completely deaf,” Professor Blair said.
“We know that the spectrum exists but we haven’t yet discovered and explored it.”
The total project cost is estimated to be $100 million, with a report by the Department of Industry and Resources recommending the state government commit $10 million to the project.
The ACIGA requested a further $20 million from the federal government this month.
Local company Duraduct has been commissioned to build the five kilometre stainless steel arms, using new vacuum welding technology developed by CSIRO.
The technology is so delicate that the maximum tolerable leakage in an arm is one teaspoonful of air in 300 years.
Professor Blair said the vacuum welding and laser technology being developed had the potential to produce spin-off benefits in other areas, such as shipbuilding and the resources industry, and to attract international interest to the state.
“With these Australian innovations we can produce it cheaper, much more efficiently and we can really capture this hi-tech stuff, but we have to first of all show people that it can be done on the scale that’s necessary” he said.
The manufacture of the arms would be complete within three years, Professor Blair said, with installation to take a further five years.
“These are horrendously complicated machines and the installation process is long and difficult,” he said.
The new observatory will ensure that wave detection takes place a minimum of once a week, but potentially once every day.
The proposed location for the radio telescope is Mileura Station, 350km north-east of Geraldton, with Karoo in South Africa also vying for the project.
Scientists will investigate both locations over the next three years, with a final decision to be made in 2009.
The project will require the development of new computer technologies for data transport and processing, as well as large-scale infrastructure, including thousands of antennas and dishes.
