Giant radio telescope in the Utah desert could reveal hidden corners of the cosmos — and brand-new physics – 1v1 Video Chat & LIve Streaming & Influencer Subscription

By Paul Sutter

Live Science
Live Science

Search Live Science

View Profile

Planet Earth

Archaeology

Physics & Math

Human Behavior

Science news

Life’s Little Mysteries

Science quizzes

Newsletters

Story archive

NASA confirms ‘interstellar visitor’
Shipwreck with ‘eye-watering’ treasure
Adult brain cells
Bird flu spread
NordVPN deal

Recommended reading

Space Exploration
NASA plans to build a giant radio telescope on the ‘dark side’ of the moon. Here’s why.

‘People thought this couldn’t be done’: Scientists observe light of ‘cosmic dawn’ with a telescope on Earth for the first time ever

Strange new object fires radio signals at Earth every 44 minutes

Farthest ‘mini-halo’ ever detected could improve our understanding of the early universe

Particle Physics
Bizarre radio signals that defy physics detected under Antarctica

Mysterious deep-space radio signals reveal location of the universe’s ‘missing matter’

Black Holes
Facing steep funding cuts, scientists propose using black holes as particle colliders

Giant radio telescope in the Utah desert could reveal hidden corners of the cosmos — and brand-new physics

Paul Sutter

4 July 2025

Scientists say that the construction of a vast new radio telescope array in the Utah desert — known as the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 — could uncover some of the biggest outstanding mysteries in astronomy.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

A composite image of the South African MeerKAT radio telescope array with vast, cosmic bubbles of radio energy in the background. A similar array called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 has been proposed for construction in the Utah desert.
(Image credit: South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO))

A gigantic array of radio dishes proposed for the Utah desert could advance our understanding of physics and help us decode cosmic radio signals. Now, scientists have outlined how it would work.

Beginning in the 1950s, radio astronomy has opened up a powerful view into the inner workings of the universe, revealing everything from how stars form to incredible images of our galaxy’s gigantic black hole. Now, astronomers are building a gigantic array of radio dishes, called the Deep Synoptic Array 2000 (DSA-2000). The array consists of 2,000 radio dishes, each 16 feet (5 meters) across, laid out in a radio-quiet part of the Utah desert.
Now, an international team of astronomers has demonstrated how DSA-2000 will be a premier instrument for revealing some of the most hidden corners, particles and processes in the cosmos.

You may like

NASA plans to build a giant radio telescope on the ‘dark side’ of the moon. Here’s why.

‘People thought this couldn’t be done’: Scientists observe light of ‘cosmic dawn’ with a telescope on Earth for the first time ever

Strange new object fires radio signals at Earth every 44 minutes

Because DSA-2000 will have both a wide field of view and a high resolution, it will be like the world’s ultimate digital camera but at radio frequencies, the team explained in a paper uploaded to the preprint database arXiv in May. These capabilities will allow the DSA-2000 to detect a wide variety of phenomena that are not possible with our current radio telescopes.

And there are a whole lot of unexplored radio transmissions in the universe. For example, astronomers think the vast majority of the mass of every galaxy comes in the form of dark matter, an invisible entity that has so far escaped direct detection.
One potential candidate for dark matter is called the axion, a hypothetical particle trillions of times lighter than the lightest known particles. Axions can collect around dense objects like neutron stars, and under the influence of extremely strong magnetic fields (which neutron stars have in spades), they can convert to photons with just the right frequency range that DSA-2000 could pick up those signals.
Related: ‘Staggering’ first images from Vera C. Rubin Observatory show 10 million galaxies — and billions more are on the way

Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter now
Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.
Another candidate for dark matter is called the dark photon, which is like our normal, familiar photons (light particles) but … dark. Dark photons can also collect around neutron stars, where they can get whipped up into a frenzy due to the star’s extreme rotation. In a process called superradiance, the dark photons get boosted to extremely high energies, where they start to resonate with regular photons, giving off blasts of signals that could be directly detected by DSA-2000.
This means that DSA-2000 could potentially offer our first direct glimpse of a new form of matter in the universe. But that’s not all.
In 2023, astronomers with the NANOGrav experiment announced the detection of gravitational waves through pulsar timing arrays. DSA-2000 could take that one step further by precisely measuring the rotation rates of approximately 3,000 pulsars — rapidly spinning neutron stars that pulsate in regular intervals. This would allow the new instrument to find any subtle variations in the spins of pulsars, such as those due to unseen orbiting companions, like black holes or small clumps of dark matter.

RELATED STORIES

—James Webb telescope unveils largest-ever map of the universe, spanning over 13 billion years
—What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning? New research suggests it may have taken place inside a black hole
—Catastrophic collision between Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies may not happen after all, new study hints
Lastly, DSA-2000 could detect tens of thousands of fast radio bursts (FRBs) — tremendous explosions that manifest as blips and bloops in the radio spectrum. This unprecedented number of detections would allow scientists to build a comprehensive survey of the nearby universe, which would aid our understanding of everything from dark energy to the nature of ghostly particles called neutrinos.
The universe is trying to whisper its secrets to us. All the answers are there, if we listen carefully enough.

Paul Sutter

Social Links Navigation
Astrophysicist

Paul M. Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at SUNY Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute in New York City. He regularly appears on TV and podcasts, including “Ask a Spaceman.” He is the author of two books, “Your Place in the Universe” and “How to Die in Space,” and is a regular contributor to Space.com, Live Science, and more. Paul received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011, and spent three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, followed by a research fellowship in Trieste, Italy.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

NASA plans to build a giant radio telescope on the ‘dark side’ of the moon. Here’s why.

‘People thought this couldn’t be done’: Scientists observe light of ‘cosmic dawn’ with a telescope on Earth for the first time ever

Strange new object fires radio signals at Earth every 44 minutes

Farthest ‘mini-halo’ ever detected could improve our understanding of the early universe

Bizarre radio signals that defy physics detected under Antarctica

Mysterious deep-space radio signals reveal location of the universe’s ‘missing matter’

Latest in Cosmology

Did light exist at the beginning of the universe?

James Webb telescope unveils largest-ever map of the universe

What if the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning? New research suggests it may have taken place inside a black hole

When will the universe die?

Gamma-ray bursts reveal largest structure in the universe is bigger and closer to Earth than we knew: ‘The jury is still out on what it all means.’

Universe may revolve once every 500 billion years — and that could solve a problem that threatened to break cosmology

Latest in News

Can adults make new brain cells? New study may finally settle one of neuroscience’s greatest debates

Neanderthal DNA may refute 65,000-year-old date for human occupation in Australia, but not all experts are convinced

1,400-year-old temple ruins the size of a city block unearthed in Bolivia

Small, room-temperature quantum computers that use light on the horizon after breakthrough, scientists say

Our gut bacteria can absorb and remove toxic ‘forever chemicals’ — at least in lab mice

RFK’s proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn