The Square Kilometre Array Telescope and SETI

The Square Kilometre Array is an ambitious project to create a gigantic telescope from two enormous arrays of smaller antennas located in South Africa and Australia. The huge collecting area of the SKA will give it unprecedented sensitivity, enabling it to search for faint signals from far away sources. For SETI, it will be able to detect civilizations on other planets orbiting other stars, even if they are no more technologically advanced than our own civilization, and are not deliberately messaging us.

In this video, we sit down with some of the scientists and engineers who are spearheading the SKA project, at the SKA headquarters in Jodrell Bank, near Manchester, England.