Will China Find Alien Life? World’s Largest Telescope Switched On In Hunt For ETs
One small step for man.
Chinese scientists made history this week when they switched on the world’s largest radio telescope, as large as 30 football fields, in hopes of making contact with distant alien civilizations.
The telescope, dubbed the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), was built in Pingtang, in a mountainous region of the Guizhou province in the south-western corner of China, at a cost of $180 million.
The FAST telescope is another feather in China’s hat and represents a technological leap forward for a country looking to become a major player in the space race.
China begins operation of world's largest radio telescope, probing the universe for life https://t.co/GEeQpyGDJ1 pic.twitter.com/2I5yz1lAnz
— Insider Business (@BusinessInsider) September 25, 2016
To build the enormous radio telescope, China was forced to relocate more than 9,000 people at a cost of $269 million to ensure a three-mile zone of radio silence around the facility. That includes a group of 65 families that had been living in the remote Green Water Village-area without electricity.
The enormous telescope dwarfs the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico and sets the record for the largest single-dish radio telescope, Douglas Vakoch, president of METI, an organization similar to SETI that searches for alien life, told CNN.
“China’s latest telescope will be able to look faster and further than past searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.”
The name FAST refers to the construction of the giant instrument. The main component measures 1,640 feet and is composed of a series of 4,450 triangular panels that each measure 36-feet long.
The dish itself is too big to move, but the individual panels can be adjusted by a series of mesh and steel ropes attached to hydraulic mechanisms.
The FAST, world's largest radio telescope, measuring 500 meters in diameter, was completed and put into use pic.twitter.com/JDGRb5nI8U
— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) September 25, 2016
China plans to assign its best supercomputer, the Sky-Eye-1, to work alongside the telescope in the hope of detecting alien signals, Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences told RT.
“In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar [spinning neutron star] is approaching us.”
The telescope will be able to study pulsars, stars that act like giant cosmic clocks; gravitational waves, ripples in space-time; and stellar radio emissions, Peng Bo, director of the NAO Radio Astronomy Technology Laboratory, told Xinhua.
“FAST’s potential to discover an alien civilization will be five to 10 (times) that of current equipment, as it can see farther and darker planets.”
President Xi sent congratulations to scientists, engineers & builders after world's largest radio telescope begun operating in SW China, Sun pic.twitter.com/DogvZewxtv
— People's Daily, China (@PDChina) September 25, 2016
The enormous telescope was first brought online earlier this year in July, and it successfully detected electromagnetic waves from a pulsar more than 1,300 light years away.
Construction on the telescope began in 2011, but Chinese scientists took 10 years to decide on the perfect location and considered 400 different places before deciding on the Guizhou province.
Scientists have been searching for alien life for decades, but a few recent events have reignite the public’s imagination. In August, a Russian astronomy team announced they had received a strong signal from outer space, but were unable to confirm it as an alien signal. Then, another astronomy team discovered a possible Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star nearest our sun.
If the telescope does discover alien life, there’s some debate about whether humans should make first contact. Stephen Hawking continues to warn humanity that meeting space aliens might be dangerous for those of us on Earth if the E.T.s decide to plunder our planet for themselves.
China just launched its second space station into orbit, the Tiangong-2, and plans to place its own Hubble telescope into orbit as well. There’s some international concern about the first Chinese space station, the Tiangong-1, plummeting uncontrollably back to Earth.
What do you think about the world’s largest radio telescope in China?
[Featured Image by VCG/VCG via Getty Images]
