China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will begin its quest to explore outer space for aliens signals in September, reports sciencetimes.com.
The telescope has a 500-meter diameter, but it only focuses on a 300-meter segment on the receiver at any given moment. FAST will also conduct two sky surveys which will take about five years, and another ten years to analyze the data gathered.
It has augmented four times the volume of the space range that radio telescopes can explore.
It stands in a natural depression located in Guizhou, Southwest China and is nicknamed “Tianyan”, which means “Eye of Heaven” or ” eye of the sky” in Chinese. It was first launched in 2016 but has been subjected to testing and commissioning since then.
Scientists agree that, when it comes to sky coverage, FAST represents a major step forward for radio astronomy.
According to Li Kejia, a scientist at Peking University’s Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, with FAST, scientists are now able to discover more unknown planets, universal phenomena, universe laws, and even detect aliens existence.