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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.
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?
What's with the vague "the next biggest radio telescope, which is in Puerto Rico"? I would expect most people on Slashdot would know it's called Arecibo Observatory, and recognise it from Contact (or GoldenEye).
Well, will the next Bond movie be shot there?
Say it, you were thinking it too.
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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Course, you lot were saying that while you were cracking whips. No irony lost then either. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It's just that the general public doesn't realize that "cigarette lighter laser with enough stored energy to burn through armor" is perhaps more farfetched than "alien invaders".
More of this and less censorship.
Regards,
The rest of the world
Not only is the Chinese facility twice as large, but the Arecibo telescope's funding is going away. and the NSF is desperately looking for someone to take it over. The NSF's funding has been flat for quite a while, but their expenses are going up and they need to trim programs.
This is all nicely metaphorical of China's rise as the world's major superpower, and the decline of the US. China is pouring huge funding into science and technology, and the US is cutting programs and shutting down major facilities.
Now the Chinese are wasting money on foolish projects.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
they have erected a giant sign... FREE WI-FI... LIKE, REALLY FREE and are just waiting for the senior leadership to swallow their tongues and keel over
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
My understand of radio telescopes is that they can not detect gravitational waves. They detect radio waves, hence the name. This can be used in conjunction with LIGO, which, as far as I know, is the only telescope to ever detect gravitational waves. Some of the phenomena that this new radio telescope will look at should produce gravitational waves, but those waves are not detected by the telescope.
"Alien-hunting telescope"? Really, guys?
A large-scale pure-science project. A tool that will advance modern astrophysical and astronomical research. A landmark technical achievement.
But it came from funny-looking furriners (not just funny-talking, like them ones from Yurp). So we must be sure to cast the headline in the most derisive terms possible. It's not a research tool that shoestring SETI projects will be able to snag a bit of time on--no, it's an "alien-hunting telescope".
I mean, my God--snippets of Aricebo's time have been used for alien-hunting (and alien-spamming) for decades. It was used to send publicity stunt messages to M13 in 1974, and to some nearer stars in 2009. SETI@home users have been crunching Aricebo data looking for little green men since 1999. And yet, oddly enough, no one ever seems to refer to Aricebo as an "alien-hunting telescope". Why is that?
~Idarubicin
Terrestrial aeronomy experiments at Arecibo have included the Coqui 2 experiment, supported by NASA. The telescope also has military intelligence uses, some of which include locating Soviet radar installations by detecting their signals bouncing off the Moon.
I don't see anything particularly wrong about the search for extraterrestrial (alien) life. I think the contrast would be that locally some of the religo-nuts would strongly object if that were the primary purpose of such a large and expensive instrument.
Dear Earth,
A hearty welcome from the Zircoids. We are happy to find out that Earth has [censored] and [censored]. This shows that at least some of the people of Earth are [censored]. Please avoid [censored], it has caused terrible problems for other civilizations. We hope to contact you again at [censored].
Thank You,
The Zircoids.
Table-ized A.I.
I genuinely believe that we are not alone in the Universe. None of us can’t be sure that our race is the one and only. I support space exploration. But does people really need such constructions? I think it would be better off spending such sum of money to help our planet. I’m not a charity fan, but I like put money to good use.
Since China is less than 100 thousand people more populous than India, you're going to have to start checking statements like this every time you make them.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"