China leads way in search for life on other planets
Print Edition
THE final piece of what will be the world’s largest radio telescope was hoisted into place yesterday in southwest China’s Guizhou Province, a landmark in mankind’s search for extraterrestrial life.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields and yesterday saw the last of its 4,450 panels fitted into its dish in an operation that took an hour.
About 300 people, including builders, experts, space enthusiasts and reporters, witnessed the installation at a karst valley in Guizhou’s Pingtang County.
Work on the 1.2 billion yuan (US$180 million) project began in 2011.
“The telescope is of great significance for humans to explore the universe and extraterrestrial civilizations,” said Liu Cixin, an award-winning science fiction writer. “I hope scientists can make epoch-making discoveries,” he said.
Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope, said the project had the potential to boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life and lead to a better understanding of the origin of the universe.
He said the telescope would be the global leader for the next 10 to 20 years.
In the first two or three years, Chinese scientists will use it for early-stage research. After that, it will be open to scientists worldwide, said Peng Bo, director of the NAO Radio Astronomy Technology Laboratory. Scientists will be able to operate the telescope by remote control and make observations from other cities, such as Beijing, which is more than 2,000 kilometers from the site, Peng said.
The telescope will dwarf Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 meters in diameter. It will also be 10 times more sensitive than a 100-meter telescope near Bonn, Germany, he said.
“Most of the technology and materials are domestically made,” said Wang Qiming, chief technologist of the FAST project.
Among the seven FAST receivers, five were domestically made and another two were co-produced by Chinese, Australian and American institutions.
Radio telescopes have made major discoveries, such as pulsars, quasars and cosmic microwave background radiation. Of the 10 Nobel Prizes in physics awarded for discoveries related to cosmology and space, six were attributed to radio telescopes.
“As the world’s largest single aperture telescope located at an extremely radio-quiet site, its scientific impact on astronomy will be extraordinary, and it will certainly revolutionize other areas of the natural sciences,” said Nan Rendong, the project’s chief scientist.
For ordinary people, perhaps the most exciting goal of FAST is the search for alien life. In two or three years, scientists could find amino acids, the foundation block of life.
There is a great chance that people will someday find life on other planets or galaxies, said Li Di, an NAO researcher.
“FAST’s potential to discover an alien civilization will be five to 10 times that of current equipment, as it can see farther and darker planets,” said Peng.
It has been more than two decades since Chinese scientists proposed building FAST in Guizhou.
In 1994, site surveying started on geo-morphological features and the distribution of karst depressions, climate, engineering environment, social environment, and radio interference.
Engineer Zhu Boqin worked on site selection 20 years ago. He recalled that after more than two hours trudging on a rugged mountain road about 150 kilometers south of the provincial capital Guiyang, he came across a large, round depression embraced by verdant hills.
It was home to 12 families in a closed-off world called Green Water Village. Lacking electricity, the villagers had a clear view of the starlit sky at night.
Zhu said that though the villagers did not understand the radio telescope, they were excited when scientists explained that they would use it to search for intelligent life on other planets.
Residents were moved to towns in 2009 where they enjoy a better standard of living, with villagers in nearby communities saying they should “thank the aliens” for their luck.
“I never thought the first time I would move would be to make way for a telescope,” said Yang Chaolan, 62, who now lives in a government-funded two-story building in the seat of Kedu Township.
Under a government plan, 9,110 residents living within 5 kilometers of the telescope will be resettled by the end of September.
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