China To Open Giant Telescope To International Scientists (phys.org) 32
Hmmmmmm writes: Nestled among the mountains in southwest China, the world's largest radio telescope signals Beijing's ambitions as a global centre for scientific research. The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) -- the only significant instrument of its kind after the collapse of another telescope in Puerto Rico this month -- is about to open its doors for foreign astronomers to use, hoping to attract the world's top scientific talent. The world's second-largest radio telescope, at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was destroyed when its suspended 900-tonne receiver platform came loose and plunged 140 metres (450 feet) onto the radio dish below. Wang Qiming, chief inspector of FAST's operations and development centre, told AFP during a rare visit by the foreign press last week that he had visited Arecibo. "We drew a lot of inspiration from its structure, which we gradually improved to build our telescope."
But not Australians (Score:2)
No doubt.
Re: But not Australians (Score:2)
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We hurt their feelings by asking for an independent enquiry into the origins of COVID-19 so now they're trying to bully us into submission.
Re: But not Australians (Score:4)
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Politicians leading the CCP have very low self-esteem and are easily angered because they hate the fact that China completely missed the industrialisation of last century, and so have a massive chip on their shoulders. It's hard to give such people respect, because all parties involved know they are not worthy of
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Avoid (Score:1)
If you use it, it will certainly broadcast your personal information, thus letting the entire galaxy know that you are uninteresting.
Different Science (Score:5, Informative)
While it's great that FAST is being open to others, it is a fundamentally different instrument than Arecibo was. Unlike FAST, Arecibo was a planetary radar. It could transmit 20 terawatts (EIRP) of 2.3GHz radio energy in order to image planetary bodies. It was these transmitters and the corresponding ultra-sensitive receivers that made the central platform so heavy.
FAST will be exceedingly good at observing deep space phenomena, but it's not so useful for solar system astronomy.
Re:Different Science (Score:5, Informative)
In other words: Arecibo was not just a light-gathering detector, it could also illuminate objects. In that sense, Arecibo could do flash photography on planetary scales. It gets pretty wild when thinking about taking a of some asteroid belt out beyond Mars: send out a really big radio pulse, slew around to do some other science for an hour, then slew back to capture the returning radio waves. Using time-of-flight, Arecibo could determine the distance to various objects in our solar system (e.g., asteroids) to astonishing precision.
There are other planetary radar facilities around, but Arecibo was the most powerful and sensitive by far. This is yet another reason why its loss is so awful.
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Unlike FAST, Arecibo was a planetary radar. It could transmit 20 terawatts (EIRP) of 2.3GHz radio energy in order to image planetary bodies.
Every planetary body worthy of study has had fly-bys and/or orbiters examine them thoroughly in all wavelengths close-up. About the only use I can think of for a "space radar" was when we couldn't see the surface of planets like Venus and we didn't know its rotational period. Now we do, so that usage is gone.
From what I understand, Arecibo is an old installation, bui
Re:Different Science (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, they're different instruments, with different purposes. The arrays like the SKA and VLA, give very good angular resolution, thanks to interferometry. But they don't have a huge amount of gain, due to their comparatively low surface area, so the collected radio energy isn't all that high. This means that either a) you have to collect data for a much longer time, or b) you're going to miss faint sources.
In the case of the radar, it was still a critical part of the equation for monitoring asteroids and other near earth objects. The radar could precisely plot the orbits of these objects, and give a good solid idea of the composition.
The funding had been cut dramatically over the past few administrations, which inevitably lead to the reduction in maintenance and upgrades that lead to its eventual demise. It's a loss of a unique instrument that can't currently be replicated by other facilities. The other facilities are often very good in their own right, with certain capabilities that exceed Arecibo, but all of these things are unique with their own strengths and weaknesses.
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The SKA especially has a large cumulative surface area. A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that the SKA (when complete) with 3000 steerable 15m dishes will have about 7 times the "light grasp" of the 300m-diameter Arecibo dish. The SKA can be split into groups of dishes for multiple observing tasks, it's 180-degree horizon-to-horizon steerable for hours-long observations etc. and there isn't a single point of failure as there was with the under-funded and poorly maintained Arecibo installati
Astronomer's revenge (Score:2)
What happens when a cube sat happens to be passing overhead when they blast out their terawatts of radio?
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Nothing really, the spectral flux density would have been pretty low. The transmitter put out 2 megawatts. Divide that by the roughly 300m diameter of the dish, and you wind up with 2.7 milliwatts per square cm. Add probably 50% efficiency, you're down to 1.3mW/cm^3, then get 300km away from it... and there's not much to worry about.
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Every planetary body worthy of study has had fly-bys and/or orbiters examine them thoroughly in all wavelengths close-up.
What Arecibo was really good at, is studying asteroids. We've found about 600,000 of those, and sent spacecraft to less than 10 of them. The number of radar systems we've sent beyond Earth orbit is even smaller.
Arecibo was used to determine sizes and orbits of asteroids. Some of that can be done optically, but determining the size of such small objects optically is difficult. It's currently not feasible to use spacecraft to do this either.
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Every planetary body worthy of study has had fly-bys
We've flow by precisely none of the 10s of thousands of rocks that could potentially hit us causing mass devastation and are therefore "bodies worth studying".
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So many words, yet so few actual thoughts!
Reasonable move (Score:3)
This is a common practice at many large experimental facilities. International collaborations and collecting the best ideas from the world increases the quality of science. This ultimately benefits the country (or countries) that have paid for the facility.
It's good timing for the announcement, though, after the fall of Arecibo.
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International collaboration to advance science and technology is great in my mind when it's on the level of individuals, private corporations, universities, and sometimes even military operations. Where I see problems is when it's governments trying to do science. More often than not the science takes a back seat to politics. We get a lot of money tossed around, plenty of pictures taken of people shaking hands, but very little science gets done.
This isn't "good timing", this is in response to the fall of
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They are going to let foreign scientists in? Okay, will they let them out? I'm being sarcastic because such blatant kidnapping would be an international incident but I would not be surprised what China might do to use this as an opportunity to gather intelligence and technology from the rest of the world.
They already let in international business people, scientists and engineers all the time. They have already gathered massive amounts of intelligence and technology from the rest of the world simply by offering western companies and their shareholders great short term profits to sell it all to them. Which of course those western companies fell over themselves in the rush to oblige.
And naturally the governments here weren't going to step in to stop it, because that would be interfering with The Invisible Hand
Braindrain in America (Score:1)
With the loss of Aracibo, the US has once again faltered. We lost access to space when we lost shuttles and had to hitch rides with Russia, and now, we're going to lose radio astronomers, etc. to this.
Also, we continue to lack any socialized medicine infrastructure which ensures doctors become doctors because they want to, rather than financial incentives, which doubles the impact of the medical bill (when you factor in their loans). We're so boned.
"So much winning," we're losing. We're losing so hard.
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You do understand that the US Aracibo observatory was obsolete
It was still the most powerful radar astronomy telescope in the world. Gravity wave detectors are a totally different field altogether, it would be like saying we don't need optical microscopes anymore because we have scanning electron microscopes.
It's a trap! (Score:2, Insightful)
I was going to claim this was a trap to lure in people from all over the world so that the Chinese government could spread another virus and therefore bring the global economy to it's knees while China simply hides it's own involvement and tries to leap ahead economically while everyone else cares for their ill citizens. But then I realized this was either too obvious as they already tried that, or a petty and unfounded accusation that served no good ends.
Here's how I believe this to be a trap. A lesson l
Re:It's a trap! (Score:5, Insightful)
I love a good conspiracy theory, but I'm not buying this one.
Launch facilities and GPS have immediate military and economic significance. Distributing that power lessens the potential for abuse.
Radio telescopes are important for basic science, but there's little immediate impact if access gets yanked. It would be a setback for science, but we can pick it up again after spending a few years to build a new one.
Instead of duplicating another nation's capabilities, it would be better to build our own new, unique ones. Everyone benefits that way. Even from the power balance perspective, which is very small, everyone is still holding some cards. There's no downside.
Unless the aliens are trying to contact us. Then you have a good point.
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I was going to claim this was a trap to lure in people from all over the world so that the Chinese government could spread another virus and therefore bring the global economy to it's knees while China simply hides it's own involvement and tries to leap ahead economically while everyone else cares for their ill citizens. But then I realized this was either too obvious as they already tried that, or a petty and unfounded accusation that served no good ends.
No, that conspiracy theory is dumb not because it is too obvious but because businesses from all over the world send people to China all the time to try to get a piece of that sweet sweet 1.4 billion person market. Or because the Chinese government is interested in buying their tech out.
Not to mention the west welcoming China's huge new middle class international tourist demographic.
A few scientists going to use their telescope is literally nothing.
They will invite people to use their telescopes since Arecibo is destroyed. They will keep it open long enough to convince other nations that they don't need their own telescope. The bits and pieces at Arecibo that could be used to rebuild will then be dismantled instead of repaired for a new telescope. Then a few years will pass to make sure this leaves the rest of the world comfortable with the idea of going to China for a telescope instead of Puerto Rico, or wherever. At which point China will think up an excuse to close the facility, which will leave them with a one of a kind capability for a decade while the rest of the world scurries about thinking on how to build their own telescope and how to pay for it all.
Given the damage to the towers and the destruction of the i
Excellent idea. (Score:1)
This is an excellent idea to get a source of ready hostages in case any Chinese national gets charged with a crime elsewhere, such as the US.