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The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) was first thought of in 1994. Thirteen years later in 2007 it's plan was approved, and in 2019, it became fully functional. In early 2020, it was officially booted up, and now it's only a matter of time until we start receiving invitations from aliens (or so we hope).
The FAST telescope is actually a single radio dish made up of 4,400 aluminum panels which are controlled by 2,200 mechanical winches. But because it's insanely large, it's also the most sensitive radio telescope in the world - 2.5 times more sensitive than any telescope that exists today. This means that it will be able to reach further into the universe than anything else has so far, hopefully finding what we haven't been able to find yet.
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The FAST telescope is situated in the heartbreakingly beautiful mountains of rural China for a reason: it's super sensitivity and ability to reach outer space means that any radio waves interfere with it: mobile phones, microwaves, satellites, Wi-Fi, radar systems, and anything that uses electricity or communicates. This is the reason why radio telescopes are always in remote areas, like in the outback of Australia or the mountains of Chile.
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The telescope has already detected hundreds of bursts from a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source that have not been picked up by any other telescopes before. This is unlikely to happen frequently, as FAST scans a tiny fraction of the sky at a time, and FRBs happen quickly in random locations.
It will also help with the current international collaboration that is attempting to locate ripples in space-time in our galaxy. It is predicted that by 2030 FAST will have taken enough sensitive measurements to be able to study the individual causes behind low-frequency gravitational waves, such as collisions of supermassive black holes.
Now that the FAST telescope has officially been switched on, we'll be expecting the news of alien contact any day now.
China Has A Ginormous Telescope For Finding Aliens
Deep in the lush mountains of Guizhou, China, a 500 meter (1640 foot) telescope lies waiting for something humans have looking for since space exploration began: proof of life beyond Earth. This is the largest telescope on the planet and as of now, it's fully operational. In other science news, a new world record has been set for the fastest marathon done in a robotic exoskeleton. Wow.
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