A time when space exploration was engaged in only two States on Earth ended long ago. Today, the space race has entered countries such as Israel and India. And China, sometimes called the world’s third space superpower after the United States and Russia have achieved amazing results. So, after three years of complex construction PRC invites astronomers from around the world conduct research using the new radio telescope with a diameter of 500 meters under the name “Spherical radio telescope with an aperture of patisamerica” (FAST). Now the Chinese astronomical Observatory is the largest in the world.
It looks like the biggest radio telescope in the world
China’s space program
You may not know this, but China’s space program was founded in 1956, and the first Chinese satellite went to surf the vastness of space already in the 1970s. Today, China launches into space interplanetary station (AMS) to the satellite of our planet offers a variety of boosters and almost all kinds of application satellites. Over 40 years in the space program China in space has been launched over a hundred satellites. Also China is developing AMS for the flight to Mars.
Recently, the journal Nature wrote that after three years of hard work, China launches the world’s largest radio telescope with one plate. And this is impossible not to rejoice. In the end, science and scientific research is something that unites people all over the world, erasing borders between countries. And when it comes to new opportunities for exploration of our cosmic home, full of mystery and exciting discoveries, to hide the joy is simply impossible.
Let us discuss with the members of our Telegram chat whether new radio telescope to detect traces of intelligent civilizations?
According to Nature, FAST scans twice the area than the radio telescope of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Chinese radio telescope is able to detect even the weakest radio waves from celestial objects such as pulsars and entire galaxies. Also, experts do not exclude that it can be used to detect distant worlds on which life might exist.
China’s space program is developing with great speed
The largest radio telescope on Earth
The world’s largest astronomical Observatory located in the far South-West of China, which greatly complicated its construction. Construction began in 2011. For five years, the engineers were able to build the 500-meter dish, consisting of 4400 aluminum panels. The cost of building the largest radio telescope on our planet amounted to $ 180 million.
In the photo the telescope of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
Note that before the discovery of this astronomical Observatory, the world’s largest radio telescope was located at the astronomical Observatory of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, which was built in 1963. The diameter of the Arecibo radio telescope is 304,8 meters. Through his work, was committed a huge number of important astronomical discoveries. In 2017 hurricane “Maria” broke a 29-meter radio telescope. Its fragments damaged the main and auxiliary mirrors of the telescope, but the Observatory soon resumed his work.
Chinese radio telescope can dramatically accelerate the discovery of various cosmic phenomena. For example, during testing FAST discovered more than 100 pulsars. According to NASA until 2017, scientists have known of just 2,000 pulsars. I can only imagine how many more pulsars in the near future will find this telescope. Also on account of his discovery of hundreds of fast radio bursts emanating from an unknown source. FAST is able to catch even the weakest signal that are not noticed by other radio telescopes.
It looked like an astronomical Observatory at the time of construction
Read more about radio bursts can be found on our channel in Yandex.Zen.
Scientists say that the largest radio telescope in the world will be able to detect distant exoplanets only on their radio. I hope it will happen in the near future. Thus, it is not necessary to forget that work FAST is not without problems — so, the main problem is to store incredibly large amounts of data, which in the next few years picked up by a radio telescope.