Renewable Energy To Power Aussie SKA

schliz writes "New solar and geothermal energy facilities are being built in Australia to provide sustainable energy for the region's Square Kilometer Array (SKA) bid. The Australian Government yesterday announced A$47.3m in funding for a full-scale, hybrid solar and diesel plant for the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, and geothermal energy facilities for the Pawsey High-Performance Computing Centre, where data from SKA radio telescopes would be processed. ASKAP is part of the Australasian bid to host the $2.5 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which involves 20 countries and will investigate galaxy evolution, dark matter, and the existence of life. IBM expects the whole of the SKA to produce an exabyte of data per day."

AU is a good choice, great skies

[linzeal]

They put out a surprisingly high number of top-notch astronomers and astrophysicists for a country of their size. Must be something about the ability to drive 50 miles outside any town and have crystal-clear desert skies free of moisture and pollution. It is a real shame that the US has been on a decline for R&D for at least a decade for the "Big Science" projects. That is not to say the US is not producing some interesting research nowadays but it a large amount of that is increasingly being done under DARPA directives which in whole or part makes any paper or discovery subject to review by an intelligence agency for release to the public.