Swiss tech helping uncover the origins of the universe

Artist impression SKA at night © 2024 SKAO With its secretariat hosted at EPFL, the Square Kilometer Array Switzerland (SKACH) consortium is celebrating two years' membership of a global project to develop the largest scientific facility ever built by humankind. In January 2022 Switzerland officially joined a great adventure - the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO), an international organization building the world's biggest radio telescope to unlock some of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Currently under construction, by the end of the decade there will be hundreds of dishes in South Africa at the mid-frequency range and more than 130-thousand low-frequency antennas erected in Australia. This next-generation radio astronomy facility will look as far back as the Cosmic Dawn, when the very first stars and galaxies formed, tackling some of the most fundamental scientific questions of our time and, with an expected operational phase of at least 50 years, it will be one of the cornerstone physics machines of the 21 century. A collaborative global project with sixteen countries currently taking part, the Swiss SKACH consortium is made up of ten Swiss academic institutions working on five key programs: Science, Data Science, Computing Platforms and Infrastructure, Instrumentation, and Education and Public Outreach. "Within the SKAO global organization the structure of SKACH is unique," explained Carolyn Crichton, SKACH Consortium Director.