China joins search for E.T. with world’s largest telescope

The world’s newest and largest radio telescope now resides in China and is ready to scan the heavens for signs of extraterrestrial life. Image XINHUA

It’s not enough that China now has two of the fastest super computers in the world. Now it also has the largest radio telescope.

According to The Verge, the telescope is called Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST. With its size as big as 30 soccer fields , FAST costs $180 million and took over five years to build. FAST is only rivaled by the next-largest radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Hugo Award-winning science fiction writer Liu Cixin said during the final installation, “The telescope is of great significance for humans to explore the universe and extraterrestrial civilizations. I hope scientists can make epoch-making discovers.”

The telescope’s primary function is searching for extraterrestrial life and exotic phenomena in the universe such as gravity waves, quasars and pulsars.