PINGTANG COUNTY, China — The world's largest single-dish radio telescope officially began operating on Sunday in China, accompanied by jubilant national television coverage, after more than five years of construction.
The five-hundred-yard aperture spherical telescope, FAST for short, is intended to project China's scientific ambitions deep into the universe, bringing dramatic discoveries and honors like Nobel Prizes. Maybe even messages from aliens.
The telescope, which is in a majestic but impoverished part of Guizhou province, embodies China's plans to rise as a scientific power. The dish is made of 4,450 intricately positioned triangular panels and has a collecting area of 2.1 million square feet, equal to almost 450 basketball courts.
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At 1,640 feet in diameter, it will be roughly twice as sensitive as the world's next-biggest single-dish radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is 1,000 feet across.
The $184 million telescope will help China make "major advances and breakthroughs at the frontier of science," President Xi Jinping of China said Sunday.
Astronomers will use the Guizhou telescope to map the shape and formation of the universe, relying on its large size and a mobile detector suspended above the dish to explore space more quickly, deeply, and thoroughly than smaller telescopes.