Is there anybody out Birr?
Giant Midlands telescope delving into the mysteries of space
A TELESCOPE in the grounds of Birr Castle could unlock the secrets of the universe and solve the age-old question: “Is there anybody out there?”
Astronomers believe the first messages from alien life forms may be picked up in Co Offaly on what is one of the biggest and most advanced instruments in the world.
The €2million dish – 150m long and 100m wide – was officially turned on in July and space experts are confident it will help shed new light on galaxies far, far away.
Prof Peter Gallagher revealed: “This giant telescope is one of a network of 50 across Europe, stretching 1,900km. That makes it possible to see very faint signals in great detail.
“We’ll see black holes, we’ll see galaxies merging together, and we’ll see explosions of the sun with better detail than ever before.
“We’re now part of this much bigger programme looking way back to the Big Bang, that is where the big discoveries are going to be made.
“When I was a kid there were nine planets, now there’s 3,000 we know about. We can see planets with strong magnetic fields which might harbour life.
“Just imagine seeing some blips going in and going, ‘Hmmm, what are those things?’
“I think that would be a kind of hairs on the back of your neck moment if you saw something like that.”
The Irish Low Frequency Array is made up of 3,000 antennae and 55km of wires and cables spread across an area the size of a football field.
It links into a €150million network of 51 stations as far east as Poland which connect back via high-speed fibre optic cable to a central core in the Netherlands. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars, still jokes about labelling the first pulses on charts as LGM1 and LGM2 – Little Green Man 1 and 2. But she admits: “Fifty years later the search for little green men goes on.” Professor Mike Garret of Search for Extraterrestrial DISCOVERY Telescope at Birr Intelligence added: “For me that is the most important question – is there alien life out there? “The telescope sees a lot of sky at the same time so we’re now in a better position than ever before to start asking the question – are we alone? “I sometimes wonder if we’re waiting for some kind of breakthrough moment where actually we find there is alien life all around us but we’re too stupid to pick it out. “There have been examples of this in the past such as bacteria which were life forms for a long time before we detected
We’ll see black holes, we’ll see galaxies merging together PROF PETER GALLAGHER ON TELESCOPE’S CAPACITY
them.
“Perhaps we’re waiting for that hook to just open up the universe and reveal artificial intelligence and maybe LOFAR is that telescope.”
LOFAR inventor Prof George Miley, who has collaborated with cosmologist Stephen Hawking, revealed he’d been fascinated with alien life since he seen HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds at the age of eight.
He said: “It was an exciting thriller about a bunch of Martians who come and invade
The hope is it will look at the first galaxies being formed PROF GEORGE MILEY ON THE RESEARCH POSSIBILITIES
the earth. I got really excited about it. I went to Dunsink Observatory and that made an enormous impression on me.”
The Dublin professor did a degree in physics followed by a PHD in radio astronomy.
Prof Miley added: “We have an array of telescopes all over Europe – that’s the same clarity of picture as if you had one big telescope spanning right across the whole of Europe.
“The real hope of LOFAR is it will look at the first galaxies being formed and see how that happened.
“The further we can go back towards that the further we go back towards our roots.”
The documentary 13 Billion Light Years From Birr airs on RTE One on Thursday at 10.15pm.