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China has world’s biggest radio telescope, but is focusing on more
- Building five more giant telescopes alongside the existing Fast facility in Guizhou is among the possibilities
- Fast has no giant peer to verify its work after the ageing Arecibo’s collapse, but experts say cost and engineering complexity are factors
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Stephen Chenin Beijing
The largest radio telescope on Earth is found in southwestern China, and the country is considering building a further five of similar size to study aliens and other cosmic mysteries, according to a senior scientist involved in the proposals.
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The dish of the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (Fast), in the karst mountains of Guizhou province, covers an area large enough to stage 30 soccer games simultaneously. The collapse last year of the US’ long-serving 300-metre Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico meant that there was no longer another giant telescope to verify Fast’s findings.
Professor Wu Xiangping, a researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories, said in Shanghai on Sunday that Fast had made so many important discoveries since its completion in 2016 that the Chinese government planned to expand capacity to six such telescopes in the same region.
The combined dish area could reach about 1.2 square kilometres (0.46 square miles), exceeding that of the largest radio telescope project under construction, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in Australia and South Africa.
03:54
China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials
China to open world’s largest telescope to international experts to boost scientific credentials
“It will give us a lead 50 years ahead of the world,” Wu was quoted as saying by Chinese news website Thepaper.cn.
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