China's 500-Meter FAST Radio Telescope Is Now Operational

China's Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope -- is now operational. The telescope was completed in 2016 -- 20 years after it was first proposed -- but has been undergoing testing and commissioning since then. Phys.Org reports: FAST's nickname is Tianyan, which means "Eye of the Sky" or "Eye of Heaven." It's built in a natural depression in Guizhou, Southwest China. Among other things, its scientific goals are to study pulsars. FAST has already discovered two of those, in August 2017. FAST's name is not exactly accurate. Though it does have a 500 meter diameter, only 300 meters of it is used at any one time. The telescope is active and can change so that one 300 meter segment is focused on the receiver.

According to Xinhua, all the technical indicators from FAST are meeting or exceeding planned levels. FAST is a powerful radio telescope, and scientists think it will make some major discoveries, especially in its first couple of years. FAST will also perform two sky surveys, which will take about five years. It'll take another 10 years just to analyze all that data. Still, there's room for flexibility in the telescope's operational schedule to pursue any surprises that come up. The surveys will take up about half of the telescope's observing time, leaving room for objectives like searching for exoplanets with magnetic fields, which are probably crucial for life.

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[ivano]

Shhh. It was eating carrots.

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[nagora]

you ignorant twat.

Gee. What gave him away? Was it the swastikas? Or the perpetual worship of a bunch of losers and their dead loser leader? Or the fact that he has nothing better to do than continually create new accounts to post this banal garbage somewhere where no one cares?

Why did they give it an English Acronym?

[Jarwulf]

Seems kinda weird to me to name it after an American word.

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[tonique]

As Wikipedia knows, the Chinese name of FAST is 12 characters long. I looked it up and the three first ones mean "five hundred metres". And the nickname is "Tianyan". The first syllable means 'sky' or 'heaven' and is the same as the first one in "Tiananmen square".

Re:Why did they give it an English Acronym?

[arglebargle_xiv]

At least it's better than the first version, Five-hundred-meter Aperture Radio Telescope.

Star Killer base

[Bluefirebird]

Just look at the thing! It is Star Killer base... can we please stop destroying planets?

Revive SETI@home ?

[Laxator2]

I remember SETI@home about 20 year ago, when computers were rather slow.
With so many modern CPUs idle and the internet speeds of today (I was on dial-up at that time), it would make a lot of sense to allow everyone to process such data at home.
The main obstacle is trust, and any data processing software that will have to be downloaded and run locally will first be suspected of being spyware.
Or worse, pretent to process telescope data when in fact it mines bitcons.

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[BlacKSacrificE]

What are you talking about? Seti@Home is still live and kicking [berkeley.edu]

Such projects are done for maximum sensitivity.

[juliabeyers]

By resolution, interferometers with a spaced base certainly cannot be surpassed. Such projects are done for maximum sensitivity. Well, no one bothers him then, if he wants to use it as one of the components on the network, having received both a record resolution (thanks to an extra-long base) and record sensitivity. Indeed, one can “look” beyond the boundaries of a galaxy for a long time, but they look at objects of completely different scales there - the radiation of galaxies in general, supe

Thought I noticed the Sun

[sphealey]

China's Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope -- is now operational.

Thought I noticed the Sun blinking.

Study pulsars?

[110010001000]

Yeah, right, to "study pulsars." My guess is it is going to be used to interfere with the next American election. Make us all vote for someone we don't like or something.

Watch Out

[necro81]

Just don't let any of the astronomers point it [stackexchange.com] towards the Sun [google.com], otherwise our species will be doomed by an alien invasion.

Time to start the Thirt Meter Telescope

[Applehu Akbar]

Put it on the Tibetan Plateau, where there are sites that are optically comparable to its originally intended site on Mauna Kea. That way, it will actually get built.

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[tonique]

Pshaw, the 39-metre ELT is being built right now! Only five more years! https://www.eso.org/public/tel... [eso.org]

Hiring?

[Ryanrule]

Did they manage to find people to run it? That was a problem earlier.

Nahertz

[necro81]

FTFA:

FAST's sensitivity allows for the timing of pulsars to be measured about 50 times more accurately than before. With FAST, researchers will be able to measure extremely low-frequency Nahertz gravitational waves for the first time.

What the hell is a Nahertz gravitational wave? Do they mean nanohertz - something whose period is like 10^7-10^9 seconds? Why capitalize it, then?

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[ElectronicSpider]

And leaving the H in lowercase... Google can't find a single mention of this Nahertz business in the last year. The saddest part is that this nonsense is spreading. I guess it sounds "technical" and "cool".

Excellent! Make Science Great Again

[Tablizer]

Congratulations, China! It's nice to see powerful science tools activated. We all focus so much on political squabbles these days that we forget to stop and smell the science.