China managed to become the first country to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. Now they dream to achieve superiority in the detection of aliens. For this purpose, the country is ready to make material sacrifices.
The last major project was the 5-year construction of the Spherical radio telescope with a 500-meter aperture (FAST), which for a long time was considered the largest radio telescope in the world (later it will surpass the Russian 576-meter).
The project cost amounted to $ 180 million. The telescope stretches almost 500 meters and consists of 4,500 separate panels. Its power allows you to track radio signals at a distance of 1000 light years. The developers of FAST believe that the telescope has the potential to search for more strange objects in order to better study the origin of the Universe and to strengthen the large-scale hunt for alien life.
The Chinese believe that this is not a national investment in pseudo-science. Research on aliens began in the last decades, after the discovery of exoplanets resembling Earth. If earlier only Ufologists spoke about UFOs, now there are serious projects, like Stephen Hawking's “Breakthrough Starshot” initiative. Therefore, the Chinese telescope is perceived as a natural step in this direction. Of course, the FAST project was not without problems and contradictions. For example, the government of the country decided to evict nearly 10,000 residents living within a radius of about 5 km around the telescope, paying each displaced $ 1,822.
It is believed that deserted terrain will create the necessary environment for electromagnetic waves, although experts believe that there was no need to resettle villagers who do not have the technology.
FAST is not only looking for aliens. Radio signals allow you to explore distant objects and phenomena in outer space. Signals from the aliens have not yet been received, but the Chinese do not lose hope and continue to listen to the sky.
