China Finishes Building Its Alien-Hunting Telescope

Work has finished on the world's largest radio telescope, which will hunt for extraterrestrial life and explore space, reports Chinese news agency Xinhua. The world's most populated nation fitted the final of 4,450 panels into the centre of the 500m-wide Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, over the weekend. The telescope, which cost $180 million -- and took five years to build -- will be switched on from September. Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy Sciences said:The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life.Gizmodo adds:FAST is almost twice as large as the next biggest radio telescope, which is in Puerto Rico. It will be used for early-stage research by Chinese scientists for a couple years, and then be used more widely. FAST is capable of detecting gravitational waves, pulsars and, eventually, amino acids on other planets.

Comments

Re:Nefarious reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

China is the most peaceful super-power, while the U.S. is the least peaceful, along with all the objectively bad things about that nation. Obviously, China is who we want to establish first contact, if it will ever happen.

Re:What if the Chinese make First Contact?

[hyades1]

Are you really so simple-minded you don't understand how having others in your community who are employed and paying taxes actually benefits you more than having them out of work and consuming your tax dollars?

And yes, in cases Walmart, it actually is really easy to tell where the money is going.