讲座介绍：

Radio signals whose origin lay beyond the Earth were first detected in the 1930s. With the development of radio interferometry, it quickly became apparent that the objects being seen in radio measurements were very different to those in the traditional optical band and this has led to Nobel Prize winning discoveries in radio astronomy. We are now in a very exciting time with the development of a global project to tackle new challenges through building the next generation radio observatory, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

The SKA will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. It will address fundamental unanswered questions about our Universe. This project envisages the construction of 133 15-m antennas in South Africa and 131,072 log-periodic antennas in Australia, together with the associated infrastructure. In addition, the SKA is an exemplar Big Data project, which requires data processing that is likely to need a combination of CPU, GPU and FPGA technologies to solve.

主讲人：

Keith Grainge received the MA degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) from Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge in 1992, and received the Ph. D degree from Cavendish Astrophysics (AP) Group, University of Cambridge in 1996. He is currently Head of the University of Manchester SKA Group, SKA International SADT Consortium Leader, Professor of University of Manchester.

His research is centred on designing radio telescopes, then using them to extract the underlying astrophysics, working at the interface between astronomy and engineering. From 2002 to 2012, he led the Very Small Array (VSA) project and the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager (AMI) telescope project. He took over as Head of the University of Manchester SKA Group on 16th December 2013.