China builds world’s largest telescope to search for alien life

BEIJING - The world’s largest radio telescope – billed as an initiative that will help humanity search for alien life - began operating in southwestern China on Monday.

China’s Xinhua newsagency reported that the 500-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, known as FAST and nestled between hills in the mountainous region of Guizhou Province, began working around noon, as hundreds of astronomers and enthusiasts watched in the county of Pingtang.

Built at a cost of RMB 1.2 billion (US$180 million), the telescope dwarfs the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico as the world’s largest radio telescope, with a reflector as large as 30 football fields.

Researchers said FAST would search for gravitational waves, detect radio emissions from stars and galaxies and listen for signs of intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

Wu Xiangping, Director-General of the Chinese Astronomical Society, said that the telescope’s high degree of sensitivity “will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy”.

“The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe,” Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told CCTV.

President Xi Jinping on Sunday sent a congratulatory letter to the scientists and engineers who contributed to its creation.

"The launch of FAST symbolises a major breakthrough in China's science research, and has great significance for the country's strategy to push forward innovation," Xi said in the letter. www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).