FAST - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope logo.
June 7, 2020
China announced the launch in September of its search for intelligent life forms in space, using a gigantic telescope.
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)
China will begin this year the search for an extraterrestrial life. A scientist at the head of the Chinese research of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) indeed declared that the immense spherical telescope with five hundred meters of opening, known under the name of FAST, would launch "officially" its hunting in September of this year, according to the official journal Science and Technology Daily. The project started in the mid-1990s, but it took two decades to complete. The actual construction of FAST started in 2011 and ended with its inauguration on September 25, 2016. However, the device did not officially enter service until January, after years of testing. Since January, according to the Chinese press body, scientists have still had to make various adjustments.
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)
Today it is the largest, most sensitive and most powerful single-element radio telescope in the world. Located near the village of Dawodang 170 km from Guiyang, FAST extends over a diameter of five hundred meters. It has many cutting-edge technologies that can eliminate interference, sort through received signals, and identify those that may be from another solar system, according to a document released in March.
Upcoming improvements
The Chinese government has announced that FAST will officially return to business in September this year. It will focus on finding foreign signals and trying to determine their source, which could really testify to another civilization than ours. However, you should not expect immediate results. The process on which FAST is based is still uncertain and imprecise. The telescope should see further improvements in the coming years.
FAST: The World's Largest Telescope
The search for these signals should not impact the other projects carried out by the teams present on site, according to one of the scientific officials. FAST will not only be intended to seek and detect extraterrestrial signals. At the heart of many other ambitious space projects, it is currently used to observe pulsars (astronomical objects) and to detect interstellar molecules that can offer elements of knowledge about the formation of the universe.
Related articles:
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https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/09/gigantic-chinese-telescope-opens-to.html
FAST - The World largest radiotelescope in service
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2016/09/fast-world-largest-radiotelescope-in.html
China FAST hunt for alien life with giant telescope
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/07/china-fast-hunt-for-alien-life-with.html
Related link:
For more information about Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), visit: http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/
Image, Animation, Video, Text, Credits: AFP/FAST/CCTV17/China Icons/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.
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