The announcement was made by the Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP), which represents the Portuguese participation.

There are 37 other research bodies involved in the project from Germany, Argentina, Brazil, the USA, The UK, Italy, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Once it is built it will be the first gamma ray observatory in the Southern hemisphere, though there is already another one in the northern hemisphere, in Mexico.

Speaking to, LIP chairman, Mário Pimenta, said the design phase would be concluded by 2022 so the Consortium could move on to the financing candidatures for the work, which should take five years.

Pimenta said he believed the observatory would cost about €50 million to build, including several water tanks at an altitude of over 4,400 metres to detect high-energy particles through their interaction with the water.

The LIP chairman said he hoped that once the funding was organised, the SWGO (the Southern Wide-Field Gamma-ray Observatory) would be in operation within eight to ten years.

Pimenta added that the location of the SWGO, in the Southern hemisphere, would allow it to observe the most interesting area of the Milky Way, its centre, where there is a massive black hole 4 million times heavier than the sun.