Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is warning that two iconic Australian astronomy facilities the Parkes radio-telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array at Narrabri, are at risk of closure after the federal government pulled $AU114 million from the agency's funding.
The cuts, announced in the government's May budget, have already stung part of the compact array, with its nearby Mopra telescope to run out of funds in 2015. According to CSIRO astronomy and space science head Lewis Ball, reported by The Guardian in Australia, the cuts mean "we have to make significant changes right now," adding that the cuts to the current year's budget happened with only "six weeks' notice." Ball was speaking to the Australian Astronomical Society's meeting, which took place last week.
According to Paul Girdler of the staff association, speaking to the ABC's AM current affairs program, part of the problem is that CSIRO also has to maintain Australia's commitment to the international Square Kilometre Array project. "CSIRO is going to have to cannibalise Parkes and Narrabri in order to keep funding the Western Australia operation," Girdler said.
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Breakthrough Listen has massively expanded its survey of stars using the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia:
Breakthrough Listen – the initiative to find signs of intelligent life in the universe – announced today that a survey of millions of stars located in the plane of our Galaxy, using the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope ("Parkes") in New South Wales, Australia, has commenced. Listen observations at Parkes began in November 20161, targeting a sample consisting mostly of stars within a few light years of Earth. Now, observations have expanded to cover a huge swath of the Milky Way visible from the site.
The expanded survey is made possible by new capabilities installed at Parkes by Breakthrough Listen: new digital instrumentation capable of recording the huge data rates from the Parkes "multibeam" receiver. The previous receivers used by Listen only observed a single point on the sky at a time, and were used to perform a detailed search of stars near to the Sun for evidence of extraterrestrial technology. In contrast, the multibeam receiver has 13 beams, enabling a fast survey of large areas of the sky, covering all of the Galactic Plane visible from the site.
Even if Breakthrough Listen doesn't find aliens, it is throwing a lot of well-deserved cash at astronomers and upgrading the capabilities of their telescopes.
Also at Space.com and USA Today.
Breakthrough Listen: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner Announce $100 Million "Breakthrough Listen" SETI Project
"Breakthrough Listen" to Search for Alien Radio Transmissions Near Tabby's Star
Breakthrough Listen to Observe Interstellar Asteroid 'Oumuamua for Radio Emissions
CSIRO Parkes: Famous Australian 'Dish' Radio Telescope to be Emptied in Budget Crisis: CSIRO
Milky Way Obscures Hundreds of Previously Undiscovered Galaxies
New Fast Radio Burst Discovery Finds 'Missing Matter' in the Universe
(Score: 2, Funny) by gawdonblue on Tuesday July 29 2014, @10:12AM
Just tell the government that they are needed to support America's defence network and there will be $billions to keep them open.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Tuesday July 29 2014, @11:14AM
I feel that the more we retreat from looking outward, the more our species fades into extinction. Little by little we are looking inward and fossilizing our hopes and dreams for a better future. Perhaps a little dramatic, but it seems to go that when older people start to give up on living life, that is the moment they slowly die. I see this with humanity, in the pulling back from expanding into space, expanding our looking at the universe all for the reason "It costs to much" or "what do we get from looking?". How about life!
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Darth Turbogeek on Tuesday July 29 2014, @11:43AM
In this case, it's a anti science crusade by the local conservatives, nothing more. There's no real cost savings, it's well known the CSIRO are world renowned and do good worthwhile shit - but the CSIRO have been on the forfront of things like climate science for decades and that's just a target for the idealoges of the local conservates.
God, I so pray the Prime Minister will be One Term Tony. He is ass fucking the place faster than I ever feared and more blatantly too.
(Score: 1) by My Silly Name on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:20PM
Just be careful which god you pray to. Maybe Abbott's god is Roko's basilisk [soylentnews.org] retroactively punishing the rest of us for failing to bring about His existence.
Hey, given the warped reasoning processes of that mob, this even sort of makes sense...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:29PM
What crisis? Hockey announced to NZ there is no crisis
(Score: 1) by In hydraulis on Thursday July 31 2014, @12:29PM
It's a bloody outrage, it is!
I want to take this all the way to the prime minister!