China's Giant Radio Telescope Begins Searching For Signals From Space (ctvnews.ca) 49
Years of work and millions of dollars later, China finished its alien-hunting telescope in May this year. Now the country says its telescope has begun its operation. The company flipped the switch over the weekend, hoping to find signals from stars and galaxies -- and more importantly from extraterrestrial life. The telescope also illustrates China's growing ambition to stay among the frontrunners in space efforts. AP reports: Beijing has poured billions into such ambitious scientific projects as well as its military-backed space program, which saw the launch of China's second space station earlier this month. Measuring 500 metres in diameter, the radio telescope is nestled in a natural basin within a stunning landscape of lush green karst formations in southern Guizhou province. It took five years and $180 million to complete and surpasses that of the 300-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a dish used in research on stars that led to a Nobel Prize. The official Xinhua News Agency said hundreds of astronomers and enthusiasts watched the launch of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in the county of Pingtang. Researchers quoted by state media said FAST would search for gravitational waves, detect radio emissions from stars and galaxies and listen for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. "The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe," Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state broadcaster CCTV. "In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar (spinning neutron star) is approaching us," Qian said.
Nothing wrong with that! (Score:2)
More eyes are better and it may foster a little healthy competition in the space tech arena.
I just hope they are in it for the long haul...
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The true value to science, is to bring about an overall understanding of the universe, that in turn, unites all. If the development of scientific tools, such as this one, causes or brings about the idea of competition, then that's an indicator of a lack of scientific ability.
Competition with the Soviets helped spur the US to put men on the moon. Certainly there was plenty of science involved in that. It was done by people who evidently did have "scientific ability".
Just because national dick-waving contests are puerile doesn't mean they don't have a useful side-effect. Sometimes they give scientists the funding and support necessary to do something great. If nations really want to compete with each other, I like this way very much better than doing it through armed conflict
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The Moon missions stopped because how many moon rocks do you really need?
Just one, the whole one. I mean, a huge "rock" circling the earth, always facing one side toward the earth, has gravity enough to occupy, is known to have frozen water mixed in with the dusty rock... but has no value to science? Crazy*.
...another contestant in the Olympics? ...technology to use for $OUR_COUNTRY to have... m
But back to my point... Applying science is the sign of intelligent life, and must fly in the face of competition. So many are looking for intelligent life out there, and for what?
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Do they have somewhere as useful as Hawaii to mount the telescope?
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China has locations on the Tibetan Plateau that are already qualified as locations for large optical scopes. The Plateau is not as advantageous in latitude as Maura Kea but is several thousand feet higher.
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No matter how many eyes look they will see nothing if they are not tuned to the right frequencies of light. In this case, the expectation is that in this galaxy, there is another transitional state society (neither primitive or advanced) at the right distance and at the right time (speed of gravity to take into account time of transmission, time to travel, time to receive, a still close enough that the transmissions are not lost) to transmit signals that we would receive. The reality is, the numbers and pr
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Mr. President, we must not allow a SETI gap!
It's not searching for anything, just yet... (Score:5, Informative)
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Didn't that Lego* thingumabob detect gravity waves during its testing phase? Ya never know.
* And don't tell me to google the correct spailing on a fruggin monday
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That, and Aliens ordering pot stickers and beef fried rice for delivery.
Wait..... (Score:5, Funny)
....how do we know they're not actually using this supposed 'telescope' to signal the aliens so they can come here and vaporize our planet? Hmmm?
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Well someone read The Three Body Problem.
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Add me to that list as well.
Just started reading The Dark Forest [google.co.uk] too, as it happens.
Both very enjoyable, and I think the 3rd one is out at the end of this year sometime.
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....how do we know they're not actually using this supposed 'telescope' to signal the aliens so they can come here and vaporize our planet? Hmmm?
Don't worry, it's actually a death ray. They just don't want xeno-environmentalists getting all uppity about some alien fungi going extinct.
Size (Score:1)
Five hundred metres in diameter! That's half a kilometre or 0.310686 miles in diameter for the metric-challenged readers.
Comparison... Sq km array & Arecibo (Score:2)
Almost 3x area Arecibo.
1/16th the area Sq km array
Feel free to correct my rusty math[s]; it's been a while. :)
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Yes, but Arecibo has access to Colombian coffee, so it's 3x more efficient. Works that way for coders.
not primarily for SETI (Score:3)
the telescope is primarily for radio astronomy, not SETI
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if SETI never finds anything in a few decades, I'll agree with you.
I believe optical SETI makes more sense than radio SETI
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How does a radiotelescope detect gravitational waves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"How does a radiotelescope detect gravitational waves?"
Green Bank did exactly that once. Remember?
http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/h... [nrao.edu]
And if China achieves first contact...? (Score:2)
Meantime, (Score:2)
Here in the US we promote the teaching of creationism in our schools by allowing the use of tax dollars to do so:
http://www.slate.com/articles/... [slate.com]