China begins operating World's biggest telescope

The world’s largest radio telescope has begun operating in South Western China, a project which Bei­jing says will help humanity search for alien life.
The mega telescope began working around noon, the official Xinhua news agen­cy reported on Sunday, add­ing that it will explore space and search for signs of intel­ligent life.
The 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) science mega-pro­ject is named after its huge dimensions: the Five-hun­dred-metre Aperture Spheri­cal Telescope, or FAST.

Built within a valley sur­rounded by naturally-formed karst hills in China’s remote and mountainous south­western Guizhou province, the FAST radio telescope’s huge dish is equal in size to 30 football pitches and was built from 4,000 individual metal panels.
It also required the relo­cation of 10,000 people liv­ing in the vicinity of the huge structure.
The feasibility study for the telescope was carried out over 14 years and con­struction took more than five years to complete.
Chinese state media have enthusiastically focused on FAST’s huge size, noting that it dwarfs by 200 me­tres the Arecibo Observato­ry in Puerto Rico, which at 305 metres in diameter had been the world’s largest sin­gle-aperture telescope since the 1960s until the Chinese telescope was completed in July.
Researchers at the Nation­al Astronomical Observato­ries (NAO) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that FAST was so sensitive at detecting signals from space that it offered far better po­tential for scientist to detect signs of life on other planets or galaxies.