One of the largest astronomical projects in human history is being implemented in China, which will look deep into the universe and answer questions about its turbulent past.
After the disaster of the famous Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico, astronomers looking for signals from alien civilizations moved their research to China. They hope that the world's largest FAST radio telescope will not only speed up the process of finding aliens, but also raise the quality of work to a whole new level.
The construction of FAST was completed in 2016, but only now the device is fully ready to perform historical tasks. Thanks to him, the scientific world will be able to observe the sky with incredible accuracy and range 3 times greater than previously possible. The Chinese radio telescope consists of 4450 triangular elements, each side of which is 11 meters long. In order to understand what this giant looks like, you need to imagine a plate 500 meters in diameter.
FAST is currently the world's largest single antenna radio telescope. For comparison: the second largest radio telescope in Arecibo had an antenna with a diameter of only 305 meters. The facility, worth over $100 million, was built in the mountains of Guizhou province, far from any cities that could interfere with its work. Therefore, it is believed that it is here that hitherto inaccessible discoveries can be made.
The Chinese FAST specialized in the detection of pulsars, that is, highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation, during three years of testing. The telescope recently detected dozens of signals coming from the same location in a very short time.
It seems that this giant was created for such experiments. Astronomers intend to use it from early 2021 to detect hundreds or even thousands of new FRBs and other mysterious signals. It is estimated that many such pulses hit the Earth every second, but we cannot detect them. Now everything must change. It is assumed that the project, concerning the search for alien civilizations and even contact with them, will take almost 10 years.