China’s gigantic radio telescope will start searching for ‘alien civilisations’
China is going to start listening out for signs of alien civilisations (Getty) Chinese state media has announced the country is set to start looking for aliens.
The tool for doing this is a gigantic radio telescope located in China’s Guizhou province.
The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope – known as FAST – finally went operational in January and will begin sifting through the cosmos to find evidence of intelligent alien life. China has already claimed the telescope has picked out 99 pulsars (spinning neutron stars) since it went operational.
The telescope had been under construction for years, finally finishing in 2016. It’s the largest telescope of its kind in the world and Chinese state media announced it will begin searching for ‘extraterrestrial civilisations’ in September.
‘A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell the meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe,’ said chief scientist of the FAST project, Nan Rendong while it was under construction.
An aerial view of the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) on June 10, 2016 in Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, China. (Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images) Alongside looking for aliens, researchers say FAST would search for gravitational waves and detect radio emissions from stars and galaxies
‘The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe,’ said Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
‘In theory, if there is civilisation in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar (spinning neutron star) is approaching us.’
The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is the biggest radio telescope in the world (Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images) China is rapidly ramping up its space ambitions and has said it wants to launch a rover to Mars next month .
