World's Largest Radio Telescope Getting Ready In China By 2016

The Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, short for FAST, is soon going to become the world's largest radio telescope, snatching the title away from Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory. The construction of the telescope #-Link-Snipped-# and is set to complete by the end of 2016. The telescope who dish's size is as big as 30 football grounds is currently being assembled in a valley at China's Guizhou province. The area called Karst depression is a naturally-formed bowl-like area, which is large enough to host the huge telescope (1600 feet) and deep enough to allow a zenith angle of 40 degrees. The engineers and technicians working on the project have began assembling the telescope's reflector which is made up of 4450 panels. Each panel is the size of an equilateral triangle with a side length of 11 meters.


Nan Rendong, chief scientist of the FAST project with the National Astronomical Observatory, told Xinhua that a radio telescope behaves much like a sensitive ear. In that, it is being made so powerful that it could identify the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm. In other terms, the bigger the dish size gets, the more capable the telescope becomes of receiving the tiniest of messages and signals.

The panels of the telescope are so designed that their positions can be altered through connected wires and parallel robots. In fact, the FAST engineers assure that they can control the panels' position with an accuracy of 1 mm.

The researchers have noted that the dish's shape can be modified and the feed cabin where the radio waves will be focused, is going to be suspended from six cables and moved around the surface of the dish. This will make the telescope observe sources within 40 degrees of the zenith

As to why the particular site was chosen by the engineers to build such a large telescope, the reasons are manifold. Firstly, the are around the chosen site is perfect as there are no cities within a radius of 5 km and that makes up for the 'radio silence' that the telescope needs. Secondly, the land site is great for draining rainwater underground and protecting the reflector

It isn't wrong to expect that the telescope is going to be a prime attraction for visitors in years to come and keeping that thought in mind, the engineers are building an 'observation platform' on top of one of the hills surrounding the FAST telescope.

As for the Chinese scientists, this is a huge step forward in their attempt to observe outer space, search for extra-terrestrial life and explore the origins of universe, given the fact that for years they have worked on 'second-hand' information collected by other countries and failed to achieve a major breakthrough.

Such a sensitive radio telescope opens up many vistas by expanding the capabilities of receiving the more distant and albeit weaker radio messages.

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