Quote:
Originally Posted by Camelopardalis
From what I understand, the award to SA was part of some developing world benefit, the idea being that if SA does something scientifically significant, it encourages its own scientists and those of nearby nations to aim high.
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It would be a pity if SKA failed, or ran into serious difficulties, due to the desire to be "charitable" overriding the usual need in science to get the best people on the job and to get the project done in the best way.
S.A. has always had some first rate
optical astronomers:
For instance, the late Anthony Fairall was an authority on the large-scale structures, and David Block is a first-rate authority on galaxies. Michael Feast is a very good stellar astronomer and Ian Glass is a well-known infrared astronomer.
So, while I feel that giving a large part of the SKA to S.A. is an unnecessary risk, I do point out, in counterpoint, that S.A. has always been good at astronomy.
P.S.
On a related subject, while Australia does have the
right technology for frontier-level radio astronomy, does it have the
right people to do radio astronomy with these instruments?
Have a look at the list of research scientists associated with CSIRO radiophysics:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/astro_people.html
My
personal opinion regarding the standard of many of the papers that these people have written is .....Hmmmmm.........and Hmmmmm again....
(yes, I
have read some of their papers, after searching for them at ADS)( these papers happen to be in personal areas of interest such as the HI properties and kinematics of galaxies, and the disk-halo interface in spiral galaxies)
It is surprising, in my view, for all the efforts of these radio astronomers, how little
some of these people have actually discovered!! (I
don't think that some of them are the right people for the job)
However, the new bloke at ATNF, Paolo Serra,
does have some
important discoveries to his credit:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Paolo.Serra/
Now I
could "name names" regarding those people I regard as having a weak record of discoveries.....but
I won't. If you want to know who, I can email you their names!!