Searching African Skies

The Square Kilometre Array and South Africa's Quest to Hear the Songs of the Stars

An ambitious scientific project is unfolding in the desert of South Africa, with a multi-decade timeline that will eventually see expansion into Western Australia—a project that is detailed and celebrated in this book on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope, expanding the capabilities of scientific probing and addressing significant unanswered questions about the universe, such as on the formation of galaxies and the nature of gravity. Keen technology correspondent Sarah Wild covers the important development with this exploration of its implications on an international scale as well as its South African context, from the first telescope built in the country in the 1960s to Xhosa starlore. Interspersed with |Xam bushmen stories rewritten from original manuscripts, this consideration is an informed and thoughtful insight into an exciting step in astronomy.