CHINA will soon make a significant contribution to the search for extraterrestrial life. Science and Technology Daily says the country’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, will begin looking for alien signals in September. Located in Pingtang County in Guizhou Province, FAST was officially unveiled in September 2016. As the world’s largest instrument of its type, it can detect radio waves from billions of light years away. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is one of the five main scientific goals of FAST. In 2018, FAST installed back-end equipment specifically to find extraterrestrials. “At present, the back-end equipment is being upgraded, and it is expected that new observations can be made after September, when the extraterrestrial civilization search will be launched,” said professor Zhang Tongjie of Beijing Normal University’s astronomy department. Typically, distinctive radio signals come from pulsars or random fast radio bursts. Still, if there are aliens broadcasting radio signals (and they’re close enough for us to receive them), FAST’s work will increase the chances that we receive them.(China Daily) |