Prof Lerothodi Lapula Leeuw (Unisa School of Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies, in the College of Graduate Studies) stands on mountain Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He was working with the telescope, Caltech Submillimeter Observatory.
How did the universe begin? Are we alone in the universe? What is dark matter? What is the nature of the dark energy? Did Einstein have the last word on gravity? How do stars form and how do galaxies evolve over time?
These are just some of the puzzling questions that the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be able to answer, says professor in Astronomy, Lerothodi Lapula Leeuw from Unisa’s College of Graduate Studies.
A passionate astronomer, who himself has worked on the SKA project, Leeuw says that South Africa hosting the majority of the instrument has enormous implications for the country and continent.
The SKA, to be shared between South Africa and Australia with some African countries hosting antenna stations, is said to be so sensitive that it will be able to detect signals from the beginning of the universe, addressing fundamental unanswered questions. An additional benefit of the research will be the generation of young scientists and engineers whose futures will be shaped through the project. In South Africa, this is particularly important given the lack of achievement in maths and science. The 2012 World Economic Forum financial development report rated South Africa’s science and maths education the worst of the 62 countries surveyed.
Like Leeuw, other African researchers and those from higher education institutions have displayed great anticipation and enthusiasm towards the SKA project. Prof Leeuw chatted to the news team about the instrument, and its implications for the continent; his research and his opinions on how Unisa could contribute to astronomy education in Africa.
Q: Why is it important for more Africans to study astronomy?
A: We definitely need more Africans studying astronomy. I go to international conferences and, at those conferences, the number of Africans in attendance is typically below half a percent. Because the skills astronomers use often get applications in many other fields outside astronomy, it is important to increase the cohort of African astronomers because this provides the continent with a large number of people with analytical skills who can also tackle other problems.
In addition, the SKA will be built in Africa and this is a huge and premier scientific instrument. We would like to not just have the instrument in Africa, but to have Africans as some of the major users of the instrument, and there are simply not enough Africans right now who will make use of any significant amount of time on that instrument. We certainly don’t have enough students in the field.
We also need to populate the number of Africans teaching science and physics in an inspiring and exciting way, we certainly don’t have enough teachers of this sort. I also believe the course content at school level should include more astronomy. This can literally be done from grade one, where learners are taught about the moon, sun, stars, building from their names, what they really are, the physics and maths of the environments and so on, and this should continue throughout all grades. This provides a tool to introduce science, analysis, and critical thinking in a way that is a part of the learners’ life, which we need here in South Africa.
There is also a big movement internationally to make telescopes accessible to students even at school level and we need to be a leader and facilitator for that in Africa. I believe Unisa can use the observatory for public outreach educating the public on astronomy and the skies. Perhaps we can broaden this in other ways, one of the possibilities is to offer short term courses in astronomy, utilising this telescope. We could also use it at a much lower level, for high school learners.
 The sun sets on the first seven dishes of the local precursor instrument – known as KAT-7. These were completed by December 2010 and are now being commissioned. Image: Dr Nadeem Oozeer (ska.ac.za) |
 South Africa is currently building the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) a mid-frequency ‘pathfinder’ or demonstrator radio telescope, alongside the SKA core site. Image: Rupert Spann (ska.ac.za) |
Q: Please speak about the impacts you believe the SKA project will have on this continent?
The SKA will be the biggest astronomy project on earth – this is versus the instruments that are in space in terms of costs. No profits will be gained from spending money on this instrument as it is purely for basic research, so the scale of the project is huge.
The physical scale of the SKA will also be enormous, and because the SKA will also have outposts of the core in other parts of Africa, I think it has huge implications for the continent. People may not know the intricacies of what the instrument will do, but they will remember its physical size, the sheer amount of telescopes (between 2000 and 3000 dishes in the Karoo), and it will create an impression for everybody on the continent. Africans will know that this big instrument is looking at the skies, trying to understand the stars, and it will give a context for science, and people will be able to talk about science in a very natural way.
And then of course, the instrument will start doing science, making big discoveries, and the news will be that these scientific discoveries are coming from Africa. It will be asking big questions about where magnetism in the universe is coming from, the origin of magnetism, and when those questions are answered, people will say it’s an instrument in Africa that discovered that. That’s quite huge, you know. And for Africans to be talking in this way about science discovery will just be a big mind booster.
One can really go on and on about this topic and its implications for South Africa and Africa. I’m only talking about scientific impacts, we’re not even going into the details about the technological implications, the possible spin offs it will have on industry and other things such as tourism.
There will also be a social impact. The instrument will look at planets around stars during their formation and when you really start to delve into planets around other stars, you may even ask questions about whether human being are really alone in this universe. And so those questions will have social, theological and all sorts of implications. It will be exciting to see debates starting as a result of the SKA – debates we are not having right now in a very rational way.
Q: This year Unisa celebrates 140 years of shaping Africa’s futures. Why are you eager to work for Unisa and what do you believe the university can offer the continent?
A: Unisa is a university with a lot of tradition and a university well positioned to offer our African continent the platform to move from being a resource based continent to a knowledge production continent. There’s a move towards that in South Africa, and I believe the continent is well primed for that. I hope that my contribution towards this will be in science, astrophysics, and being in the graduate college, I hope that contribution will be interdisciplinary.
Given the reach the university has across the continent, and because my work includes being part of the SKA research activities, I hope to explore the history and resources Unisa has to contribute to this as I believe the SKA project provides an opportunity to facilitate the state of the art learning and training that we are talking about in science. It is a great time to be at Unisa and I hope to make an impact.
Read about the SKA South Africa.
Read about the SKA.
Read about the history of astronomy in South Africa.
*Written by Rivonia Naidu-Hoffmeester
