Inside China Tech: FAST keeps big eye on space after Arecibo collapse

FAST – short for Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope – has a dish as large as 30 football fields
Dubbed ‘Sky Eye’ by Chinese authorities, FAST is expected to be open to foreign scientists from next year

China technology

Bien Perez

Published: 6:00am, 5 Dec 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Hello, this is Bien Perez from the South China Morning Post’s Technology desk, with a wrap of our leading stories this week.

Puerto Rico’s massive space telescope, the Arecibo Observatory, has ended 57 years of astronomical discoveries after sustaining severe damage since August of this year. The 900-tonne instrument platform of the telescope, which was featured in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye starring Pierce Brosnan, collapsed on Tuesday.

That has left China’s Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) as the world’s only giant, single-dish space telescope in operation.

Dubbed by Chinese authorities as “Sky Eye”, FAST was initially opened for domestic astronomers in April last year and became fully operational in January this year.

The world’s largest full dish telescope, which has been featured in an episode of US science documentary television series Cosmos: Possible Worlds, comprises an area that is as large as 30 football fields and is 2.5 times more sensitive than Arecibo, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

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World's largest radio telescope starts operating in China

FAST, however, is expected to be open to foreign scientists from next year, according to a report last month by state-backed media People’s Daily.

The operator of FAST, the National Astronomical Observatory under the CAS, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Before the collapse of Arecibo, Chinese scientists had been able to compare data from FAST with the Puerto Rican space telescope, according to Liu Boyang, a researcher at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in the University of Western Australia.

Great size and great ambition

Liu said larger radio telescopes have higher resolution and sensitivity, allowing astronomers to view the universe more clearly and detect fainter objects. Although FAST has a dish that is 500 metres (1,640 foot) in diameter, only 300 metres of that are used at any one time.

“For observation within the solar system, Arecibo was able to transmit signals and receive their reflections from planets, a function that FAST isn’t able to complete on its own,” Liu said.

Beijing tightens data protection for app users

The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator, this week published a draft set of rules that narrows the scope of personal data collection by 38 common types of apps in the market.

Twelve of those types of apps, which include live-streaming and short video-sharing, will be prohibited from gathering even “necessary personal information” for providing basic functions like video playback and search.

The draft rules describe necessary personal information, including a user’s mobile number and location, as data that is “essential to ensuring the normal operation” of apps.

Privacy infringements and information breaches have become hot-button issues in China, which has the world’s largest internet population and smartphone market. Photo: Agence France-Presse

The draft rules represent the latest effort by China to strengthen personal privacy protection in the world’s largest internet market, where privacy infringements and information breaches have become hot-button issues.

Last month, authorities drafted the country’s new Personal Information Protection Law that aims to significantly increase penalties for companies responsible for data breaches. It proposed stiff fines of up to 50 million yuan (US$7.6 million) or 5 per cent of a company’s annual revenue.

Chinese regulators last week reprimanded some of the country’s biggest technology companies for weak protection of user data, nearly a year after the government penalised 100 apps for breach of personal information.

Genshin Impact’s stock rises with best game win

The plaudits just keep on rolling for the anime-style role-playing action game Genshin Impact.

Developed by Shanghai-based miHoYo, Genshin Impact recently won the best game award for 2020 from both Google Play and Apple’s App Store.

“Any title crowned Best Game has to exceed expectations and deliver compelling, accessible, genre-defining experiences,” said Google Play on Wednesday. “Thankfully, this year’s winner does all this without missing a beat.”

Genshin Impact is an anime-style action adventure game that lets users play magic-conjuring warriors in a post-apocalyptic world. Photo: Shutterstock

Genshin Impact’s success follows the wins for PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile – both developed by Tencent Holdings – on Google Play in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

The miHoYo game made US$245 million and US$148 million in October and November, respectively, to average US$6 million in earnings each day, according to app tracking firm Sensor Tower.

And that is all for this week. Until next time.

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