As Nasa discovers ‘Earth 2.0’, China nears completion of giant telescope designed to find signs of alien life
As Nasa basked in the success of discovering an earth-like planet around 1,400 light years away, China entered the final sprint on what will be the largest radio telescope in history.
Kepler 452b was detected by the US space agency's Kepler Space Telescope, Nasa said on Thursday. It orbits a star similar to our own, at the right distance to potentially support life.
Extra-planetary transmissions from that distance are well beyond the reach of any instruments currently in operation, but not for the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) currently under construction in China.
"The universe is full of radioactive noise. Distant signals are like the singing of cicadas in a thunder storm, without an incredibly sensitive 'ear', they can't be identified," professor Nan Rendong, chief scientist on the FAST project, told Xinhua.
Nicknamed the Sky Eye, FAST is designed to capture extremely faint radio transmissions from over 1,000 light years away.
