For about 45 years, the 1000 foot diameter radio telescope at Arecibo has been the largest in the world (also known as that radio telescope they used in Goldeneye). Now China has something bigger planned.
They call if FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope...I wonder how that translates?) and is is being built by the National Astronomical Observatories. It will have a similar design, built into a natural depression. It's collecting area will be about 2.5 times that of Arecibo. The telescope will not be able to move. By moving the receiver, they can observe anything within 40 degrees of vertical.
The telescope will observe in frequencies from 70Mhz (a little below the FM band) up to 3gigaherz (a little above our typical microwave oven's 2.4Ghz).
As the Chinese embark on this project, Arecibo is fighting for survival. It must find more external funding sources to survive due to National Science Foundation budget cuts. It is still a great facility and can do cutting edge research with proper instrumentation.
China has already taken the lead over the U.S. in manufacturing...I shudder to think what will happen if they take over the lead in science research. You might think who cares if they take over the lead in astronomy, but they have their eyes on other scientific fields as well so we had better get our act together.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
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4 comments:
Yeah, they've already entered the space age, and they're long-time members of the nuke club. It always strikes me as ironic that we do so much business with the Evil Empire.
Is there really that much “noise” out there or is everyone still hoping to hear something?
Can they hear the UFO’s coming to earth? I truely am a firm believer in UFO’s.
Lots of objects give off radio signals, including neutral hydrogen at 1.42Ghz (right in the middle of the frequency range of this guy). There are several natural masers (like a laser but microwaves instead of visible light) in this range as well. There are lots of objects that give off radio waves including pulsars, some black holes, quasars, and magnetars to name a few. With greater sensitivity, we'll probably find some new ones.
This telescope is not designed for SETI searches, the Phoenix Project searched for SETI signals and piggybacked on the Arecibo telescope for a while. Since FAST has similar design, they probably could put a SETI search on it as well if they wanted (and more importantly, if someone wanted to pay for it!)
The next big thing in SETI, just getting started, is the Allen Telescope Array. The problem is there is a lot of sky and a lot of different frequencies to scan and the signals will be week.
including neutral hydrogen at 1.42Ghz (right in the middle of the frequency range of this guy).
Is this like if Nemo was out there a ripped a big fart it could be heard?
I find it amazing how much money and time is spent on outer space and yet we done even know whats on the bottom of our oceans.
But I am glad there are people who enjoy keeping up on space and can show us some of the beautiful pictures of stars and explosions from the sun and other objects.
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