Seventy-five top international software experts are descending on Malta this week to discuss the intricate details of the world’s largest radio telescope being built in South Africa and western Australia.

Computer scientists, engineers and astronomers will be discussing the science data processing of the telescope - the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) - at the Old University Building in Valletta.

The one-week event, which starts tomorrow, is being organised as a joint effort by the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA) at the University of Malta.

“The SKA is being built to answer some of the most fundamental questions about the universe and our role in it. This meeting is laying the foundation of the software design that will truly transform the SKA from an ordinary radio telescope to a flexible cutting-edge instrument capable of searching the radio sky quicker than ever before,” Kristian Zarb Adami, ISSA director and astrophysicist, said in a statement.

The telescope is designed to discover how the first stars formed in the universe, subject Einstein’s theory of relativity to its most stringent test so far and shed light on whether intelligent life has developed on other planets.

However, surveying the entire universe is by no means an easy task and will require more than one hundred million home computers to process the data that is being collected from the furthest corners of the universe.

The SKA will also produce between 10 and 100 times the internet’s data traffic so scientists need to design a system which can process the data on the fly as there is no current way of being able to record the data as it comes off the telescope.

The Science Data Processing consortium, led by the University of Cambridge, has chosen Malta to come and discuss the detailed design of the computing platform and software architecture. This comes from the ongoing collaboration with ISSA and the Faculty of Science at the University of Malta.

ISSA has been working with local software companies to develop the system that will monitor and control the computing farm and ensure the system is always available to produce the most exciting science of the 21st century.

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