Reportedly, 9,000 people are about to or in process of being relocated because the largest telescope in the world is being built in China. The scientists and authorities explain the necessities behind such a dire act where thousands of people are being forced to leave their homes for new ones. But it’s all for science and in order to create the perfect environment for what is meant to be one of the world’s most recent and largest telescope up to this date.
The radio telescope in question is being constructed in the Guizhou Province that was dubbed Five Hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) last year when the Guizhou Provincial Committee secretary-general approved its construction. Beyond the fact that FAST is an amazingly large construction itself, the engineers who designed it said that it is made in such a way that it requires a sound electromagnetic wave environment in order to return proper results.
In that sense, Li Yuecheng, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference secretary-general in Guizhou Province said that things such as radio waves produced by house appliances and electronic devices such as cell phones, microwave ovens and many others could actually lead to a large amount of interference of the telescope’s good functioning.
So the approximately 9,000 individuals living on a 5 kilometer radius from the site of this massive scientific project have no choice but to leave and find somewhere else to live. The officials have said that they have made 4 different settlement locations available for the ones affected in two different counties – Pingtang and Luodian. The families living near the scientific site will still have until September this year to relocate as that is when the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope is expected to be completed and be put to action.
This year will mark the end of a more than 5 years long construction which only commenced after 17 more years of searching for a large enough natural depression optimal for the construction of this telescope dish. Once it is completed, the FAST telescope will officially become the largest of its kind, 200 meters wider in diameter than the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is currently holding the world record.
Once it becomes functional, the FAST telescope will be capable of detecting much fainter radio waves across the galaxy, as well as sensing much further away than previously, scientists say. Even radio waves coming from distant pulsars and even other galaxies could be picked up by it, not ruling out the chance of detecting signals from other intelligent forms of life.
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