The world's largest radio-telescope, the size of 30 football fields is set to be unveiled this week by China's NAO Radio Astronomy Technology Laboratory. With this, the potential for detecting radio signals sent by alien civilizations is going to be enhanced by 'five to ten times' says Peng Bo, the Director of the laboratory.
The giant radio-telescope is named Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) and is built amongst the mountains of south-west China. It has been a $185 million project that took 5 years to be accomplished, according to The Telegraph.
The 1640-feet dish is made up of 4450 triangular panels and has a field of vision that is nearly twice that of the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, the biggest in the world for the last 53 years. Although Russia's 576 meters diameter RATAN-600 is larger than FAST, it is not a single dish telescope and FAST out-rivals it in terms of collection capacity.
According to Nature World News, the giant radio telescope would begin to function as a alien-hunting machine by the end of September. However, alien-hunting is not the only objective of the Chinese mission.
FAST has a higher sensitivity than any previously built radio telescope. Hence it would be possible to collect data about the distribution of the most abundant element in our galaxy, hydrogen, from deep into the cosmos. This would help scientists to know better the origin of the universe.
Reportedly, FAST would help to detect more pulsars, clusters of stars that send radiation in the form of pulses and are regarded as clocks more accurate than even atomic clocks. This could enable scientists to detect ripples in the space-time fabric which are called 'gravitational waves' and might eventually help to discover how galaxies evolved.
However, FAST is not equipped to detect asteroids that might be closing in towards the Earth. But it is surely going to open up ever more interesting times for scientists, astronomers and cosmologists.
Notably, for the next two to three years, Chinese researchers would be given more priority in accessing this telescope but following that it would be freely available to scientists world-wide.
