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A collaboration of scientists from 20 different countries are working on plans to create a vast network of radio telescopes linked together, which could reveal the birth of planets and galaxies, help out in the search for dark energy and provide us with an unrivalled capability to detect signs of alien life.

The project has been named the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) as the estimated 3,000 radio telescopes to be used in the project will cover such a huge region. The project team is currently trying to decide between two sites, one based in South Africa, the other in Australia. Once completed, the SKA would offer 50 times greater sensitivity and around 100 times better resolution than any radio telescope array on Earth so far, however the project does not expect to be completed until 2024.

The project would require vast amounts of fibre optic cable (estimated to be enough as would be required to go twice around the Earth) and potentially the biggest supercomputer on the planet, given that each of the 3,000 telescopes would be producing around 20GB of data every second.

You can listen to a radio broadcast about the new telescope project by visiting BBC iPlayer - the programme was produced for BBC Radio 4 and was titled 'The Biggest Radio on Earth'.