Science with SKA and its precursors : a revolution in astronomy

Séminaire IPAG de Stéphane Corbel (CEA), jeudi 26 septembre 2013 à 11h00, IPAG seminar room

Radio astronomy is at the beginning of a major revolution, thanks to the advent of new large radio telescope arrays. The main step currently planned will be the definition of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA, with a collecting area of one km^2) within a few years. Meanwhile, the construction of SKA precursors is progressing rapidly (ASKAP in Australia and MeerKAT in South Africa), while other networks such as LOFAR in Europe are already producing first scientific results. Radio astronomy will change significantly our understanding of the Universe in the next years. New technologies, associated with enormous capacity of calculations, allow the construction of a telescope with a very large field of view ( 50 degrees^2 at 1.4 GHz) and a high sensitivity (gains of several orders of magnitude) over a wide frequency range (0.1-15 GHz). Continuous monitoring of the radio sky becomes possible, which opens a new terra incognita in astrophysics. However, technical challenges remain. During this seminar, I will present an overview of the current radio astronomy with a perspective on the big scientific expectations associated with these new projects, such as the time of reionization, the origin and evolution of large structures, the detection of gravitational wave, the transient universe ... France, a country at the forefront of major advances in this domain, can not remain outside such scientific opportunity !