World's Largest Telescope is Now Open for Visitors

After being launched in September, the 500-meter (FAST) Aperture Spherical telescope in China was officially opened to the public.

However, every day here only welcome 2,000 guests. When visiting the world's largest telescope, visitors must be extremely cautious due to the sensitivity of the sensory information of the apparatus. Guests are required to return the electronic equipment before entering the observatory. The FAST telescope was built in the remote mountainous area of ​​Guizhou Province (China). This work enhances people's understanding of the origin of the universe, seeks extraterrestrial life and can bring China a Nobel Prize. Local media has said that increasing the size of the greeting as large as possible helps the telescope capture weak signals from the distant universe.FAST can receive signals at a distance of 11 billion light years and within a year of operation, this work has doubled the number of pulsars previously.

Photo: James Webb Space Telescope / Openverse/flickr (BY)

However, experts still do not expect FAST to make a breakthrough in the field of astronomy in the next few years as they still have to check and correct for complex equipment. The FAST project was first introduced in 2007 and started construction in 2011. In July 2015, FAST began installing 4,450 reflective glass panels. The entire project costs about 1.2 billion yuan. To build, the Guizhou government has displaced 10,000 people living within a 50km radius. The resettlement plan received a lot of criticism because it cost labor, as well as little compensation for people, 12,000 yuan per person, about half the average annual income of the Chinese people. National. Local people also complained about the resettlement sites that the nearby authorities built were of poor quality. Not only that, when FAST came into operation in September last year, a new regulation was adopted to keep quiet around the telescope area, including bans on construction, hunting, mining and settlement. Violators may be fined 100,000 yuan.