China completes the world’s largest telescope on Sunday after five years of construction and installation of 4,450 panels into dish the size of 30 football fields in South Western China’s Guizhou Province.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) proved to be a significant progress in China and the entire world's quest to determine whether there really is life outside the Earth.
According to the Guardian, the project is among the top priorities of Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration because the country is establishing itself as a major player in the space exploration industry.
The FAST
The dish, which was cut out from a mountaintop, is located at a valley in Guizhou's Pingtang County. The last and final panel was installed at around 10:47 a.m. local time and lasted for about an hour.
The Xinhua News Agency said that the installation was witnessed by some 300 people including builders, science fiction enthusiasts, experts and journalists, and had proven to be a significant landmark ahead of its official launch of operations in September.
Work on the massive telescope began in 2011 and was funded by the Chinese government with about 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million).
Searching for Alien Life
China placed tons of investment in terms of money and hope in the project since smaller radio telescopes have proved to be a significant tool in history's major astronomical discoveries.
"As the world's largest single aperture telescope located at an extremely radio-quiet site, its scientific impact on astronomy will be extraordinary, and it will certainly revolutionize other areas of the natural sciences," FAST project chief scientist Nan Rendong told Xinhua.
According to him, the FAST will be able to provide Chinese astronomers and scientists a great head start in the race of discovering extraterrestrial life with five to 10 times more power than their current equipment.
"The telescope is of great significance for humans to explore the universe and extraterrestrial civilizations. I hope scientists can make epoch-making discoveries," award-winning sci-fi author Liu Cixin told the Chinese state-run media outlet.
National Astronomical Observation (NAO) Deputy Head Zheng Xiaonian said that scientists will soon begin debugging the telescope and commence trial space observation.
Xinhua said that Zheng has high hopes for the project, which he believes to have "the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life."