ROME, March 31 (UPI) -- A European organization says it held a two-day international workshop in Rome this week to discuss the "Square Kilometer Array" science project.
Delegates at the Tuesday-Wednesday event -- organized by the intergovernmental European Cooperation in Science and Technology and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics -- were to discuss the major economical and societal benefits of the large-scale scientific research infrastructure investment.
COST officials said the Square Kilometer Array is a $1 billion-plus international project to create a radio telescope incorporating a receiving surface of 1 million square meters (11 million square feet) of small antennas, which would be 50 times larger than the biggest receiving surface now in existence.
Officials said the radio telescope was conceived as an international project to meet the future needs of astronomers. It would be used to address fundamental questions in contemporary physics and astronomy, including the nature of the first stars in the universe, the nature of dark matter and dark energy, theories of gravity and the origin of cosmic magnetism.
