31/05/2016

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:00:07. > :00:08.Good morning, I'm Ayshah with a special Newsround this Tuesday.

:00:09. > :00:10.Keep watching to find out about a global project

:00:11. > :00:21.which is trying to see further into space than ever before.

:00:22. > :00:25.And how did the first stars and galaxies form?

:00:26. > :00:28.Two massive questions that scientists are hoping to answer,

:00:29. > :00:32.with the world's biggest and most powerful radio telescope.

:00:33. > :00:35.Its HQ will be right here in the UK, but it's being built

:00:36. > :00:40.This week we'll be telling you about, how it could change our

:00:41. > :00:54.For thousands of years humans looked to the skies and have wondered what

:00:55. > :01:07.With our eyes we studied the stars and planets in the night sky, with

:01:08. > :01:10.Ancient peoples believed the stars had

:01:11. > :01:13.special powers and built mystical structures like Stonehenge to study

:01:14. > :01:20.While others learnt to use the sky as a map to help them navigate over

:01:21. > :01:25.Then came one of the most important inventions in

:01:26. > :01:35.A simple piece of glass that makes things that are

:01:36. > :01:38.far away appear close, magnifying the viewing power of our eyes.

:01:39. > :01:43.Using optical telescopes, we found craters

:01:44. > :01:46.and mountains on the moon, spots on the sun, and discovered we are

:01:47. > :01:55.surrounded by other planets in the galaxy called the Milky Way.

:01:56. > :01:59.But around 80 years ago, scientists began to look into the cosmos

:02:00. > :02:02.for the things our eyes could not see, when they invented the radio

:02:03. > :02:15.Sights belonging to the invisible world.

:02:16. > :02:22.What an optical telescope does is enhances the view

:02:23. > :02:28.with your eye so if you got with your eye and look

:02:29. > :02:31.the light goes through your pupil but what telescope does is it

:02:32. > :02:33.increases the side of your pupils to the other

:02:34. > :02:36.to a sceptic and collect more light is he things and magnifies its odour

:02:37. > :02:41.What you see with your eye is the colours of the

:02:42. > :02:45.rainbow but beyond the rainbow there is a whole lot of information

:02:46. > :02:48.of information your eye can't see so beyond the red there is

:02:49. > :02:51.the infrared and then the radio, beyond the Bard is the ultraviolet

:02:52. > :02:59.and then the x-rays and gamma rays so radio

:03:00. > :03:01.you see the universe, a completely different view

:03:02. > :03:04.If humans had radio dishes for eyes we would be

:03:05. > :03:08.able to see through clouds and as much by day as we do by night.

:03:09. > :03:09.That is because these telescopes don't see

:03:10. > :03:12.the stars, but instead see the gas between the stars that produce radio

:03:13. > :03:16.And now scientists are building an giant radio telescope,

:03:17. > :03:18.100 times more powerful than the best in the world.

:03:19. > :03:21.When it's done, it will help us explore what's out

:03:22. > :03:25.there further than we have ever seen before.

:03:26. > :03:27.To let us discover new galaxies, how the universe began and

:03:28. > :03:40.This telescope was built over 50 years ago.

:03:41. > :03:43.It's still one of the most powerful radio scripts in the world.

:03:44. > :03:49.But the telescope scientists are working on

:03:50. > :03:53.now will be 100 times more powerful and the images will be 6000 times

:03:54. > :04:05.But it won't just be one massive telescope like this.

:04:06. > :04:09.Thousands of smaller dishes and up to a million antennae, that will be

:04:10. > :04:14.huddled together over an area the size of 200 football pitches.

:04:15. > :04:41.The telescopes are being built into main countries, Australia and South

:04:42. > :04:49.Africa. They will be faster than any system that exists at the moment.

:04:50. > :04:52.They will be so sensitive, they will be able to pick up signals from

:04:53. > :05:05.planets that are tens of light years away.

:05:06. > :05:12.This is the most exciting science project of this early part of the

:05:13. > :05:16.century. We are going to use it to look backwards in time, write to the

:05:17. > :05:21.beginning of the universe and to answer some amazing questions such

:05:22. > :05:29.as are their beings as intelligent as us out there in the universe. All

:05:30. > :05:32.the telescopes are spaced out, why? You can imagine them being part of a

:05:33. > :05:39.lens. The further they are apart, the sharper the vision. If you add

:05:40. > :05:45.up the areas of all of them, that's equivalent to one very big one.

:05:46. > :05:53.These dishes will be the eyes of the project. And a computer like this

:05:54. > :05:57.one will be the brain. One of the information from the dishes has to

:05:58. > :06:03.go somewhere, like this supercomputer being built right here

:06:04. > :06:09.in the UK. This thing has the power of 1 million home computers. SKA

:06:10. > :06:14.will see more of the complete picture and could change what we

:06:15. > :06:20.know about our universe, and life as we know it, forever. This week I

:06:21. > :06:30.will see where thousands of dishes being built and discover how SKA

:06:31. > :06:37.could help us talk to aliens. Maybe there is life somewhere, in a solar

:06:38. > :06:39.system in another galaxy. And you tell us what it's like to be

:06:40. > :06:42.involved in a project like this.