The Square Kilometre Array: radio silence in Western Australia for most powerful telescope in history

On a former cattle farm in the remote outback, scientists are laying the ground for the biggest science project of the next 20 years: a radio telescope capable of picking out something like an airport radar on a planet in another solar system. Turn on your phone at your peril, because preserving radio quiet here is priority number one

" The world's most powerful radio telescope

In outback Western Australia, around 350k northeast of the small town of Geraldton, lies an area of land about the size of the Netherlands, but with only 100 humans living in it: the shire of Murchison.

The land looks beautiful but far from unusual as you head up the long red road north - mostly pancake flat and scrubby, with here or there the spark of a winter flower, a kangaroo or a sudden, luminous outcrop.