China is allegedly in a race against time to build the world’s largest telescope, in order to join the ambitious search of alien life on NASA’s recently discovered, planet Earth 2.0. This telescope is funded by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking.

This giant of a telescope is reported to be of the size of 30 football fields, and makes the Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, 305 meters in diameter, seem positively miniscule. The construction site in located in the mountains of China’s Guizhou province. The diameter of the telescope’s reflector will be 500 meters and will be made up of 4,450 panels, and the perimeter of 1.5 km, would take 40 minutes to complete.

The creation of Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, would allow China to obtain much of its space knowledge by its own means, rather than relying on external data.

This sensitive telescope, will make way to greater range of information of weak radio signals. To communicate with alien life out there, could be simpler.

Initial funding of $100 million had been launched by Hawking and Milner. This invention by China, would mark its status as one of the leading centers for extra-terrestrial research with Australia’s Green Bank Observatory and California’s Lick Observatory.

Speaking to the Russian Times, Milner said that the development of FAST is not only a great leap forward for China, but significantly aims to benefit space research in general.

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Author:Technology Blog