With the vision aligned in the infinite depth of the night china, and after five years of adjustments, completed the construction of the largest radio telescope in the world from a single aperture. This is an installation of 500 meters aperture spherical that will try to unravel the secrets of the Universe and "hear" the pulse of the stars to capture radio frequencies that will lead to new civilizations.
The FAST or radio telescope of Aperture Spherical is situated in a mountainous area in the county of Pingtang in Guizhou province. To determine their location, the scientists studied more than 400 possible territories for 10 years. Its construction forced the evicted 9,000 residents of the area. In addition, the population that remained in the surrounding area have limited the use of telecommunications devices (like mobile phones) so as not to interfere with their operations. The authorities require a "radio silence" of five kilometers around the radio telescope, and visitors should turn off cell phones.
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The tray of the FAST is formed by 4.450 panels with a surface area equivalent to thirty football pitches. With its half-kilometer in diameter, doubles the field of view of the Arecibo of Puerto Rico, with its 305 meters, it was from 1963, the antenna with the greater scope of the planet. Its cost was around 1,200 million yuan, about $ 180 million.
The director of the National Observatories of Astronomical Technology Laboratory of radio astronomy believes the chances of a FAST locate any alien civilization will be five to ten times higher than the current, because you will have the ability to observe planets more distant and more distant. During the calibration step, which began in July of this year, detected a set of electromagnetic waves of high quality, sent in by a star located 1.351 light years.
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The advantage of the larger telescope aperture only –since by using the technique of interferometry is achieved by a higher field resolution thanks to the combination of multiple antennas– it is to be located one thousand meters of altitude, in a remote area with little radio interference, will provide scientists with a read more clean.
Between their complementary objectives is to analyze the agglomerations of dark matter in our galaxy, to reveal the possible presence of neutral hydrogen in the Milky Way and to study pulsars, neutron stars that emit radiation very intense short intervals and regular.
The band of frequencies in the operating range from the 70 megahertz (MHz) to 3 gigahertz (GHz), but at a later stage, you will reach the bands around 6 and 8 GHz. With these receivers, you will be able to make detailed maps of the distribution of atomic hydrogen in both the Milky Way and in external galaxies. It is expected that the chinese astronomers may have priority of use during the first three years, before it is open to scientists from all over the world.
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With the launch of FAST, China placed an essential piece to compose his space platform. Last week, China put into orbit its space laboratory Tiangong-2, which in October will receive the visit of the manned mission Shenzhou-11 and that is a precursor to the space station scheduled for 2022. Other long-term goals include sending a man to the Moon, or the landing of a probe robotics on Mars.
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