China Building World's Biggest Radio Telescope

Zothecula writes "Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with a diameter of 305 m (1,000 ft) and a collecting area of 73,000 square meters (790,000 sq ft), has been the largest single-aperture radio telescope ever constructed. But Arecibo is set to lose its title with construction now underway in Guizhou Province in southern China of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Upon its expected completion in 2016, FAST will be able to see more than three times further into space and survey the skies ten times faster than Arecibo."

Re:Headstart

[robot256]

I would care less about the news of a Chinese large-aperture radio telescope if Arecibo weren't constantly held under the axe of NSF funding cuts. We need at least one operating on the planet to track earth-bound asteroids, among other things, and there's no guarantee the U.S. Congress will keep ours operating.