amazing discoveries

John Sarkissian picks a blade of grass from the lawn and lets it drop gently. The CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory scientist with an OAM (Order of Australia Medal) for his services to astronomy explains that the energy expended by that tiny leaf when it strikes the ground is more than all the energy ever collected by every radio telescope ever built, in terms of the astronomical data received. “That’s why radio telescopes have to be so big,” he says. “The large surface area of the dish allows us to collect enough weak signals so we have a strong enough signal to detect and analyse.”

In the case of this radio telescope, that means The Dish, as it was immortalised in the 2000 movie of the same name, has a diameter of 55 metres and weighs the equivalent of three fully laden jumbo jets. As John explains, although The Dish was only intended to have a 20-year lifespan when it was commissioned in 1961, it has been continuously upgraded ever since and is now more than