China’s giant FAST radio telescope to join hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence
But busy schedule could delay attempt to probe flickering star
The world’s largest radio telescope, in southwestern Guizhou (貴州) province, is joining an international search for extraterrestrial intelligence focused on a strange, flickering star that has sparked unprecedented curiosity in recent months.
Andrew Siemion, director of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Research Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, said in October that the centre had entered into a partnership with the FAST radio telescope in the hunt for evidence of advanced civilisation in space.
We are very excited to work with our colleagues in China on conducting SETI observations with FAST
The 1.2b yuan (HK$1.37 billion) FAST – short for five-hundred-metre aperture spherical telescope – has a dish bigger than 30 soccer fields and a diameter almost 200 metres greater than the world’s second-biggest radio telescope, operated by the United States at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
The Berkeley centre’s Breakthrough Listen project, a US$100 million initiative founded last year by internet investor Yuri Milner to conduct a 10-year search for intelligent life in space, is leading the hunt.
“Breakthrough Listen recently entered into a partnership with FAST and the National Astronomical Observatory of China,” which built and operates the telescope, said Siemion, who is also a co-director of Breakthrough Listen.
In late October, Breakthrough Listen began targeting the flickering star – unofficially known as Tabby’s star – which is about 1,500 light years from earth in the constellation Cygnus, using the 100-metre-wide Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, US.
