With the help of IBM, a group of scientists are attempting to build a radio telescope powerful enough to probe the origins of the universe by capturing very weak signals from around the time of the Big Bang.

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) Consortium is an international collaboration between 13 institutions from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and India.

The ultimate goal of the $51 million MWA telescope is to observe the early universe by detecting and studying the weak radio signals emitted when the universe consisted of only a dark void of hydrogen gas (aka the cosmic Dark Age).

If such data can be collected, the scientists hope to understand how stars, planets, and galaxies were formed. The telescope will also be used by scientists to study the sun's heliosphere during periods of strong solar activity and time-varying astronomical objects such as pulsars.

IBM’s role will be to replace MWA's existing custom-made hardware systems with its IBM iDataPlex cluster. Doing so is expected to enable greater flexibility and increased signal processing.

The IBM press release reads:

The MWA is a new type of radio telescope is designed to capture low frequency radio waves from deep space as well as the volatile atmospheric conditions of the Sun. The signals will be captured by the telescope's 4,096 dipole antennas positioned in the Australian Outback in a continuous stream and processed by an IBM iDataPlex dx360 M3 computing cluster that will convert the radio waves into wide-field images of the sky that are unprecedented in clarity and detail.

The cluster is expected to process approximately 50 terabytes of data per day at full data rate at a speed of 8 gigabytes per second. That’s the equivalent to more than 2,000 digital songs per second.

Read more about the telescope here. Find the IBM press release here.