The huge construction project, which when completed will reach an area of about 30 football fields, may advance our knowledge of the universe and search for life on other planets. It will potentially be able to detect radio signals and if there are then also signs of life from about a million stars
A huge scientific and engineering project set up in China will discover whether we are really alone in the universe, and will also teach us about the nature of the universe.
China's military space program is building the largest radio telescope in the world, with a aperture of 500 meters (the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope or FAST). Chinese television revealed that it is close to completion.
The huge construction project, which when completed will reach an area of about 30 football fields, may advance our knowledge of the universe and search for life on other planets. It will potentially be able to detect radio signals and if there are also signs of life from about a million stars around which at least some of them have solar systems at the same time.
According to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, FAST will be completed in 2016 and will allow researchers to actually detect signals from billions of light years away.
Nan Randong, the chief scientist of the FAST project, told the news agency that the giant probe will enable a much more accurate detection.
"A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear and can detect meaningful radio signals out of the white noise of the universe, like hearing the sound of a cricket in the middle of a lightning storm. Its accuracy will make it possible to survey pulsars in the Milky Way and other galaxies. The array will also be able to be used as a huge ground station for radio signals from space that will go out into deep space and of course, it will have an advanced option to search for signs of extraterrestrial life in systems such as Kepler 452b which was announced by NASA in the summer and which is similar to Earth and is in the habitable zone of its system.
The telescope is located in a natural depression in the impressive limestone mountains in the Giza district. The distance will allow to reduce interference from other radio signals, and the topography of the area is an ideal place for this type of telescope.
When completed, it will overtake the most powerful telescope in the world - the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is 305 meters in diameter.
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Lorem Ipsum
The truth is that it's actually a good way to give people who don't deal with size estimation on a daily basis, feel what the order of magnitude is by giving an example of something of a size they do know (and a football field is actually a unit that is used many times to do this*). But it is indeed worth noting in addition to this (and even better before) also something about standard units.
*Other popular examples of this phenomenon are elephants (although I don't understand why considering that most people don't really encounter elephants and know their size), jumbo planes, buses, different skyscrapers, different currencies, and people.
I didn't know that football fields are a standard unit for measuring area.
For the sake of improvement, I suggest that it should also be specified how many Disneylands can be built there.
Stunning
Force. and building a large and important scientific center in China that will bring it a lot of science and also the accumulation of knowledge. What most countries want... there is no difference between China, the USA, Israel and the other countries in this context..
And why do they really do it?
It is hard to believe that China would invest so much money in a purely scientific project, what does China's military space program want to achieve from this?