World's largest radio telescope ‘can shed first light‘ in exploring universe: astronomers

The world's largest radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), is put into use on September 25, 2016, in a mountainous region in Pingtang County of southwest China's Guizhou Province. [Photo: Xinhua/Liu Xu]

The Five-hundred-meter wide Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, is now operational in the mountains of Guizhou in southwest China.

FAST has been designed to help Chinese researchers better understand our universe, as well as probe the cosmos for extraterrestrial life.

With a reflector the size of 30 football fields as the main structure, scientists have described FAST as a super-sensitive "ear" capable of spotting very weak messages from space.

Wang Qingming, the telescope's electro-mechanical system's chief engineer, says the size of the reflector is important.

"When we follow a star, the reflector must compensate for the rotation of the earth, so that it always points to the star. Through our technology, the reflector will be able to observe the stars for an extended period of time."

Though the structure itself is too big to move, each of FAST's over 4-thousand triangular panels can be adjusted toward different angles to point at different parts of the sky.

While the sheer size of the facility is impressive, Zhu Lichun, the person in-charge of FAST's measurement and control systems, says its the precision of the instruments at their facility in Guizhou which is truly important.

"While everyone tends to focus their attention on how grand the structure is, what's most impressive about FAST is its precision. You have to reach this level of precision on this level of scale, at a stipulated time, this is what's really difficult to achieve."

Among the tasks being conducted by the FAST telescope include observing pulsars, as well as research into interstellar molecules and communication signals.

Peter Wilkinson, professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester in the U.S., says FAST can do 2 particular things much better than any other telescope in the world.

"One, is to study the radiation from the simplest element in the universe, which is hydrogen - hydrogen gas all through the universe, and it tells us all sorts of things about the way things are moving in the universe. And the second big thing is pulsars and things going bang in the sky. Turns out they are the most accurate clocks in the universe it enables you to look for gravitational waves, one of the predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity."

Scientists have suggested the potential of FAST to detect alien life will be five to ten times greater than the equipment which has been used in the past.

The construction of the 180-million-U.S. dollar project began in 2011, 17 years after the original plan was originally conceived.

The installation of the main structure was completed in early July.

FAST's conclusion and work is being monitored at the highest levels in China, with Chinese President Xi Jinping sending off a note to scientists, engineers and builders of the giant telescope.