Radio astronomy to foster Swiss research and industry

(Image: Pixabay CC0) By becoming a member of the SKA Observatory (SKAO), the largest and most ambitious radio astronomy collaboration in the world, Switzerland intends to foster Swiss research and industry while contributing to an international initiative that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope arrays promise to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe and the laws of fundamental physics by studying light from celestial objects in the radio frequency range, and Switzerland has just committed 33.6 million CHF to the project for the period 2021-2030 towards construction and early operation of the telescope. The accession of Switzerland to SKAO was an important milestone for Switzerland, as well as for SKAO, as Switzerland was the first non-signatory country of the Convention establishing SKAO to become member. Great challenges lie ahead of us, but I trust we will be able to overcome them. Radio astronomy is now a well-established field of astronomy and has led to the discovery of new celestial objects, and more generally new classes of objects such as quasars, masers, pulsars, radio galaxies and the more recent fast radio bursts. The cosmic background radiation, regarded as evidence for the Big Bang theory, was also discovered through radio astronomy observations in 1965. Initially, hundreds of dishes will be built in South Africa as part of the SKA-mid telescope, while over 130 thousand low-frequency antennas will be erected in Australia as part of the SKA-low telescope.