Sign In / Register
Professor Sergei Gulyaey at the 30-metre satellite dish in Warkworth, which was provided to the Astronomical Observatory by Spark in 2010.
Preventing the collapse of modern technological civilisation and looking for extra-terrestrial intelligence is all in a day’s work for the Warkworth Radio Astronomical Observatory.
Among its many projects is a collaboration with Harvard University to map our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
The Milky Way contains 200 billion stars and is shaped like a disc with four extending spiral arms.
The Earth is located on the periphery of the galaxy between two of the arms.
Conventional telescopes that observe visible light cannot see beyond the centre of the galaxy.
However, Warkworth’s 30-metre dish radio telescope can pick up radio waves that penetrate through gas and space dust, providing a clearer picture.
For the collaboration with Harvard, the Warkworth telescope will be observing microwaves emitted by the formation of new stars within the spiral arms, known as ‘methanol masers’.
The data the observatory collects will be used to more accurately calculate the distance between the Earth and the spiral arms, assisting in creating a 3D map of the galaxy.
Professor Sergei Gulyaev says acquiring this knowledge could be a matter of survival for the human species.
“If a star exploded in a supernova near Earth, and we were caught unaware, that would be it for us.
The gamma rays would destroy the Earth’s ionosphere and end all civilisation.”
The Warkworth observatory is also part of an international network of telescopes that observe the radio emissions of super massive black holes, known as quasars.
By observing the exact and unchanging location of quasars, observatories across the world can create an accurate frame of reference to observe the rotation of the Earth.
The Earth routinely wobbles on its axis because of its swirling molten metal core and this causes aberrations in its rotation and tilt.
It is important to monitor the Earth’s rotation because it affects any navigational device that uses global positioning systems (GPS), including cars, ships and planes.
“If a driverless car uses GPS to navigate, it might be able to drive on the left side of the road today. But if tomorrow the Earth slows down its rotation, then the GPS could send the car into oncoming traffic,” Professor Gulyaev says.
The radio telescope network is used to provide corrections to global positioning systems to prevent this type of error occurring.
The Warkworth telescope has also been trying to solve one of the universe’s oldest mysteries concerning the source of sudden bright bursts of radio waves.
“Imagine a super bright flash that for a thousandth of a second is so powerful it outshines the whole galaxy.”
Professor Gulyaev says one of the prevailing hypotheses has been that the radio bursts come from an extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Thanks, in part, to the work at the Warkworth Observatory, the source of the radio burst has been tracked to a Magnetar star.
A Magnetar is a small but highly dense rotating neutron star that emits an extremely powerful magnetic field.
Professor Gulyaev says extra-terrestrial intelligence still can’t be completely ruled out as a reason for these and other radio bursts, especially bursts that come from beyond the galaxy.
