Astronomy harnessing science

for development in Africa

Phil Mjwara

Director-General: Department of Science and Technology

South Africa

The role of Basic Sciences to the Industrial

Revolutions

1st Industrial Revolution: knowledge formulationDNA: James Watt

steam mechanization, etc.

2nd Industrial Revolution: knowledge evolutionDNA: Electro-Magnetism by Faraday, Maxwell & Hans Christian Ørsted

electrification, mass production, etc.

3rd Industrial Revolution: knowledge distributionDNA: Transistors from Semi-Conductors by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley

Computerization, internetization, etc.

4th Industrial Revolution: knowledge mutationDNA: Artificial Intelligence by Turing

Cyber-physical systemization, artificial cognization, robotization, etc.

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Prof Tshilidzi Marwala I University of Johannesburg

Key Outstanding Questions:

Understanding of the Universe (1)

Key Questions: Understanding of the

Universe (2)

CERN LHC: Particle Physics

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ALICE: a state of

matter just after the

big bang

ATLAS: fundamental

particles: Higgs

Boson

CMS: fundamental

particles: Higgs

Boson

• Discovery of fundamental and new

particles

• The discovery of the Higgs boson

particle was important to the

Standard Model; and giving other

particles their mass

• Next revolution will be driven by

discovery in fundamental science such

as particle physics and astronomy

• It is therefore important for

Governments to invest in fundamental

science

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Why South Africa invests in Basic Sciences:

Astronomy and Particle Physics

• Geographical Advantage

• Scientific Returns

• Technological Returns

• Socio-Economic Returns; and

• International Partnerships

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Geographical Advantage Areas

• Astronomy– Pristine clear Southern Skies in the Karoo

– Dark skies in Sutherland (optical astronomy)

– Radio silence in Carnarvon (radio astronomy)

– Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act (2007)

enacted – legislation to protect the astronomy

sites

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Northern Cape SKA Site -

Population Density

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Northern Cape

2% population

40% land area

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Scientific Returns - Astronomy

• Scientific outputs grown from below average to twice above

the global average – global ranking in astronomy

increased from 33 to 21

• Size of astronomy community tripled over in 15 yrs from

60 PhD astronomers to over 200 and pipeline is increasing

•

• Significant HCD programme through SKA Bursary

Programme– Over 1000 bursaries awarded (15% to African SKA partner countries)

– Bursaries span from undergraduate to postdocs in astrophysics,

engineering and computing studies as well as artisanal/technical skills

• Six Astronomy Research Chairs in SA – attracted

international renowned leading astronomers

CHPC and MeerKAT: Benefit from CERN

development

• A very significant and generic Big Data deliverable from the

MeerKAT project is the 20 peta-byte Ceph storage system that

is used for the MeerKAT Tier-0 archive hosted at the CHPC

premises

• Ceph was developed at CERN for its Tier-0 archive, and

MeerKAT Science Processing team have very successfully

transferred the software platform to South Africa

• The hardware (i.e the physical disk drives) is based on the

storage pods that were developed by MeerKAT team in

partnership with Peralex (a local SMME) at a fraction of the cost

of equivalent hardware on the market

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CHPC and MeerKAT: Benefit from CERN

development

• This hardware and software is now available to any South

African customer

• Ceph is an open source software platform designed to

provide highly scalable object, block and file-based

storage under a unified system

• SARAO uses Ceph to synthesise a ~20 PB object-based

storage system for the data generated by South Africa's

MeerKAT radio telescope.

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Technological Returns

• MeerKAT/SKA revived local high end Printed Circuit

Boards (PCB) manufacturing industry - ROACH 3rd

generation boards (SKARAB);

• BabyKAT – locally designed electronically operated

miniature telescope for training and educational

purposes;

• Digitiser Innovation: 1st design to sample signal

directly at receiver

✓ No electronic interference in frequency bands

and contamination inside

✓ Equipment expected to last for 30 years in

extreme Karoo environment

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Socio-economic Returns in South

Africa

• 75% of components that went into the construction of

the MeerKAT were sourced locally – local industry

benefited

• More than R110 million was awarded to 16 SMEs

nationally through the SKA Industry Financial

Assistance Programme

Socioeconomic Returns – Carnarvon Community

Schools Programme

On-the-job Training

Contractors Forum

Community

Knowledge Centre

Local expertise & business development

International Partnerships

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• International Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

• African Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (AVN)

• MeerKAT radio telescope– South Africa’s precursor to the SKA telescope

– Currently the world’s most sensitive instrument of its kind

– Inaugurated in July 2018

• MeerLICHT telescope– Provides a simultaneous optical view of the radio sky from MeerKAT

– A Dutch-South African-United Kingdom collaboration

– Makes use of new cutting-edge technologies

• Southern African

Large Telescope (SALT)– Optical Telescope

African Astronomy

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• HESS Gamma Ray Observatory (Namibia)

• AVN Project - Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory

• Development in Africa through Radio Astronomy (DARA)– DARA co-funded by South Africa and UK’s Newton Fund

– DARA conducting workshops and training programmes in data

handling techniques for astronomy across Africa

• Big Data Africa Programme– Rollout of High Performance Computing racks and training

programmes in processing of data in all African SKA partner countries

– Skills applicable to areas outside astronomy in

sectors such as health and climate change

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Investments in South Africa

• Instruments/facilities that have been attracted as a

result of the SKA, include:

– HERA - The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array is a radio

telescope dedicated to observing large scale structure during and

prior to the epoch of reionization

– HIRAX - The Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis

eXperiment is a radio telescope array

– C-BASS -telescopes at the SKA site and MeerLicht in Sutherland

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Conclusion

• Investments in astronomy are key for scientific

breakthroughs for the next industrial revolution

• STI returns include:

– Socio-Economic

– Technological

– Scientific

– International Co-operation

• Pan African Programmes

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Dankie

Enkosi

Ha khensa

Re a leboga

Ro livhuwa

Siyabonga

Siyathokoza

Thank you