China to look for alien life with world’s biggest telescope

Chinese scientists are building the world’s biggest radio telescope that could broaden the search for extraterrestrial life.

The country’s military-sponsored space program is constructing the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), set to be the world’s largest radio telescope at the size of 30 football pitches, according to CNN.

Upon completion, the FAST telescope will allow for the detection of radio signals and potentially signs of life from planets tens of billions of light years away.

The key to the FAST telescope lies in its massive dish reflector, which is made up of 4,450 panels and is 500 meters in diameter, according to a July report from Xinhua News.

When finished, the FAST telescope will have a perimeter of approximately 1.6 km, and it will take roughly 40 minutes to walk around it.

Also in the report, Nan Rendong, chief scientist of the FAST project, told Xinhua that the greater the dish size, the better capacity of the telescope to receive weaker-signaled messages that could be potentially missed by smaller telescopes.

“A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe,” he said. “It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm.”

Per the report, work on the FAST telescope began in 2011 and is set to finish by next year, greatly enhancing Chinese scientists’ ability to observe deep outer space.