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

What if the Chinese make First Contact?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has long been assumed that when First Contact were to happen, it would involve representatives of the American government involved, speaking on behalf of the entire planet.

But what if it were actually the Chinese who made First Contact? What if the aliens end up being forced to work in factories, making shoes up to 18 hours a day?

Re:What if the Chinese make First Contact?

[hackingbear]

But what if it were actually the Chinese who made First Contact? What if the aliens end up being forced to work in factories, making shoes up to 18 hours a day?

Then the American government will cite it as another evidence in its annual Human Right Report and promptly deport those aliens to Mexico.

Nefarious reasons

[Dunbal]

Of course you'd like to think the Chinese wish to be the first to contact aliens to ensure that a cultured, civilized race be the first to make contact. The real reason, however, is they want to be the first to find out if ground up alien pseudo-pods increase your libido and if alien tastes better than cat.