China's 500-meter Radio Telescope Is World's Largest - To Help the Chinese Dominate Scientific Research?
China Holds the Record for the Biggest Radio Telescope in the World
After more than five years, China is gearing up to open the largest radio telescope's eye on to space.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) has been installed with more than 4,400 reflecting panels. The device is also considered to be more sensitive than any other telescopes in the world. The Chinese government is hoping to achieve many scientific goals by using FAST to survey outer space.
FAST to Scan Alien Life and Black Holes?
The FAST is 500m wide and undoubtedly bigger than the previous record holder of the world's largest telescope, the Arecibo Observatory. The telescope is located in a remote are in Guizhou Province in China. It costs $185 million and was started back in 2011. The FAST can reach 1,000 light years worth of radio waves and have the potential to search for alien life, black holes and other curious phenomenon in space.
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Deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation (NAO), Zheng Xiaonian, said that FAST can potentially uncover "strange objects" in space including aliens and possibly find out how the universe began, Express noted.
Yue Youling of NAO adds that with the telescope and the "fundamental physics of pulsars" will help scientists understand the Big Bang theory, Time reported. However, using only calculations without another way of verifying the data can make the results unpredictable.
Tech Crunch wrote that the FAST team is specifically interested in pulsars. More so than black holes and quasars which all emit radio waves and therefore just as detectable by the telescope. Scientists use radio waves to determine signs of intelligent alien life in outerspace.
China to Dominate Scientific Research with FAST
FAST was first proposed as an idea in 1994 and approved by the Chinese government in 2007. It took them approximately 10 years to determine the best spot to build the telescioe in China. According to Phys.org, the scientists apparently picked Dawodang, Kedu Town in Guizhou Province because the mountainous terrain can naturally shield the telescope from frequency interference.
"FAST will enable Chinese astronomers to jump-start many scientific goals, such as surveying the neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way, detecting faint pulsars, and listening to possible signals from other civilizations," NAN Rendong, chief scientist of FAST said.
It will take China a few more months to debug and tune FAST before it can be operated for use.
Do you think China will successfully discover intelligent alien life in outerspace using FAST? Let us know how you think their scientific foray will go in the comments below.
