A Solomonic Compromise May Yet Determine the Home(s) of the SKA. (April 12, 2012)

In the April 12, 2012 issue of Nature's News in Focus Geoff Brumfiel reports that the management board of the $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project has empowered "a new scientific panel to determine whether the telescope, to be made up of 3,000 15-metre-wide dish antennas and many more simpler antennas, could be divided between the two proposed sites".

According to Mr Brumfiel both Australian and South African politicians are opposed to splitting the SKA between the two proposed sites, but of course neither side wants it situated on the other's land mass. However, Heino Falcke, a radio astronomer at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, believes that while: "Normally when you have a giant dish, you cannot split it, the SKA has many different components" The easiest political solution would be to divide the project by placing the higher-frequency dishes on one continent and the lower-frequency antennas on the other.

Albert Zijlstra, director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics says such a move would almost certainly increase the cost of the project but at least splitting the receivers on the basis of frequency reception would preclude the necessity of a high-throughput data link. Nevertheless Professor Zijlstra sees little scientific advantage to splitting the project and Professor Falcke agrees saying: "It’s a question of politics"

The newly designated panel is scheduled to deliver its findings by mid-May when the SKA board is to meet once again to determine the SKA's disposition.