27.04.2012

Opening of German-South African Year of Science

Last week, Germany’s Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan and South Africa’s Minister of Science and Technology Naledi Pandor opened the German-South African Year of Science 2012/2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. The topic of the month and one of the seven central themes is astronomy. The official opening in South Africa was also attended by DESY scientist Christian Spiering, chairman of the Committee for Astroparticle Physics (KAT) in Germany. In an exhibition and a talk, he presented the German-South African cooperation in astroparticle physics and the future project CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array), for which the South African region also bids to host this project.

German Federal Minister for Education and Research Annette Schavan and her South African colleague Naledi Pandor with a model of CTA.

The earth is exposed to a constant rain of particles from outer space that can provide insights into the happenings in the depths of the universe. Scientists use these cosmic messengers to uncover the secrets of stellar explosions, of cosmic particle accelerators like the surroundings of black holes, or of dark matter.

Many of these very comprehensive questions of astronomy can only be solved in large international collaborations. One example is the planned Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA. This arrangement of 50 – 80 telescopes will record the bluish short flashes emitted by high-energetic gamma rays that hit the earth’s atmosphere. The five telescopes of the forerunner instrument H.E.S.S. that was erected in Namibia under German leadership already detected 85 cosmic gamma ray sources, e.g. the residues of stellar explosions, binary star systems, or the most powerful jets shooting out of the centres of active galaxies into outer space.

Namibia bids to host CTA and is getting strong support from South Africa. CTA is on top of the European priority list of future large-scale projects (ESFRI). German institutes participating in this international project are DESY, the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and for Physics in Munich, the universities in Berlin (HU), Bochum, Dortmund, Erlangen, Hamburg, Potsdam, Tübingen and Würzburg, and the Heidelberg observatory. Construction is to start in 2014.

„South Africa was the stage for a key event in astroparticle physics – here, in 1965, the first atmospheric neutrino was detected in a mine,” Christian Spiering summarises.