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| The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in China’s Guizhou Province. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock |
China is ready to put on the
"ear phones" and flip the "ON" switch for the world's largest, most
powerful radio telescope, that is nearing completion in a vast,
bowl-shaped valley in the mountainous southwestern province of Guizhou
by the end of September, accompanied by regulations to protect the
facility. Its unrivaled precision will allow astronomers to survey the
Milky Way and other galaxies and detect faint pulsars, and work as a
powerful ground station for future space missions.
"A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell
meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe," said Nan
Rendong, chief scientist of the FAST project. He told Xinhua that the
huge dish will enable much more accurate detection. "It is like
identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm."
"Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more
distant radio messages," Wu Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese
Astronomical Society, "It will help us to search for intelligent life
outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe," he added
underscoring the China's race to be the first nation to discover the
existence of an advanced alien civilization.
The construction of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical
Telescope, or FAST, has entered its final phase. With a dish the size of
30 football fields, FAST, which measures 500 meters in diameter, dwarfs
Puerto Rico's 300-meter Arecibo Observatory. Under the regulation, FAST
requires radio silence within a 10-kilometer radius.
The Chinese government hopes that a more subtle benefit of the
behemoth eye on the cosmos will entice some of the some of the brightest
minds in science or astronomy studying abroad to return home to China.
China is the leading nation in the world in the number of students it
sends students abroad, especially for majors such as science or
engineering.
FAST is the world's largest single-aperture telescope, overtaking the
Arecibo Observatory in the US territory of Puerto Rico, which is 305
meters (1000 feet) in diameter. The dish will have a perimeter of about
1.6 kilometers, Xinhua said, and there are no towns within five
kilometers, giving it ideal surroundings to listen for signals from
space.
According to chief scientist from China’s National Astronomical
Observations, Li Di, FAST will be able to scan up to twice more areas of
the sky than Arecibo shown above, and it will have between three to
five times the sensitivity. It’s in their hopes that if there is indeed
alien life, this gargantuan will find it.
The region's karst topography -- a landscape of porous rock fissured
with deep crevasses and underground caves and streams -- is ideal for
draining rainwater and protecting the reflector. Unfortuately, citizens
actually living in the area where the radio telescope will be built are
being relocated. Some 2,000 families residing near the Pingtang and
Luodian counties will be given $1,800 per individual for the forced
relocation.
For years Chinese scientists have relied on "second hand" data
collected by others in their research and the new telescope is expected
to "greatly enhance" the country's capacity to observe outer space,
Xinhua said. Beijing is accelerating its military-run
multi-billion-dollar space exploration program, which it sees as a
symbol of the country's progress. It has plans for a permanent orbiting
station by 2020 and eventually to send a human to the moon.
Construction on the telescope started in March 2011.
AFP/Beijing
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