Square Kilometre Array: the radio telescope of the XXI century

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. It will address fundamental unanswered questions about our Universe including how the first stars and galaxies formed after the Big Bang, how dark energy is accelerating the expansion of theUniverse, the role of magnetism in the cosmos, the nature of gravity, and the search for life beyond Earth. This project envisages the construction of 133 15-m antennas in South Africa and 131072 log-periodic antennas in Australia, together with the associated infrastructure in the two desert sites. In addition, the SKA is an exemplar Big Data project, with data rates of over 10 Tbps being transported from the telescope to HPC/HTC facilities.