China's Alien Telescope Aims To Be The First To Discover Existence of An Advanced Technological Civilization
With a dish the size of 30 football fields, China's new FAST
radio telescope, which measures 500 meters in diameter, dwarfs Puerto Rico's
300-meter Arecibo Observatory. Having the world's largest and most powerful new
radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST),
"We can receive weaker and more distant radio messages," said Wu
Xiangping, director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society.
"It will help us to search for intelligent life outside
of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe," he added
underscoring the China's race to be the first nation to discover the existence
of an advanced alien civilization.
The dish will have a perimeter of about 1.6 kilometers, and
there are no towns within five kilometers, giving it ideal surroundings to
listen for signals from space. Scientists have depicted it as a super-sensitive
"ear", capable of spotting very weak messages - if there are any -
from "cousins" of human beings.
The telescope, nicknamed Tianyan, or the Eye of Heaven, can
accurately image twice as much the sky as the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto
Rico, which had previously been the world's largest single-dish radio
telescope, with double sensitivity and five to 10 times the surveying speed.
Douglas Vakoch, president of METI International, an
organization promoting messaging outer space in the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence, noted that astronomers worldwide will be invited to use the
facility through a competitive review of observing proposals.
"By opening FAST to use by the broader international
community, China is demonstrating its commitment to fostering astronomy as a
global scientific enterprise," he told Xinhua, saying it may lead to
"discoveries beyond our wildest imagination."
As for FAST's scientific missions, Vakoch said it will be
used to look for the signatures of complex organic molecules in interstellar
space, which will show how widely the basic building blocks of life are
distributed throughout the cosmos.
"For over a half century, astronomers have been using
radio telescopes to answer the haunting question, 'Are we alone?' But
astronomers face a daunting challenge: the signals they seek are so weak that
an incredibly sensitive telescope is needed to detect them," he said.
"FAST's innovative design and huge collecting area give
it unsurpassed speed and sensitivity, making it vital to the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence in the coming decades," said Vakoch.
"We can expect China to become a world leader in the search for
extraterrestrial intelligence because of its demonstrated commitment in
building FAST."
However, FAST will not initially be outfitted with the
signal processing capabilities to search for aliens, he said. This technology
will be added at a later stage, and when that happens, FAST will be able to
scan the heavens for signals that "can't be created by nature, but only by
advanced civilizations," Vakoch said.
Sometimes, radio telescopes are "confused" by
signals from astronomical objects. For example, astronomers once mistook
signals from a pulsar for extraterrestrial signs, because a pulsar can also
give out very stable periodical signals.
"It is highly possible that life on other planets is
entirely different from that on Earth, and it might not be carbon-based,"
says Jin Hairong, deputy curator of Beijing Planetarium.
Liu Cixin, a Chinese science fiction writer and winner of
the Hugo Award for his novel The Three Body Problem (check out the fascinating
video trailer below), points out the current method assumes that aliens also
communicate in radio waves. "But if it's a truly advanced civilization, it
is possible to use other more advanced forms of communication, such as gravitational
waves."
But Mao Shude with the National Astronomical Observatories
of China and professor of astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Observatory believes
many methods deserve a try: "Who knows what they are and how they think?
"When we study the origin of life, we risk going down a blind alley if we
only have one sample from Earth," Mao says. "If we could find more
samples in the universe, we could look at the puzzle more comprehensively and
solve it more easily."
Shude gives an example in astronomy to explain the
limitations of a single sample. "When scientists started to look for
planets around Sun-like stars, they thought it must be difficult as their
period might be as long as a year.
However, the first such planet discovered outside our solar
system takes only four days to orbit its host star - much faster than
astronomers expected. At that time, some people doubted it, showing how the
example of our solar system narrowed their thinking."
"If we really discover extraterrestrial life, I'd like
to know how life spreads in the universe. Is it distributed uniformly in space,
or clustered?" Mao wonders.
However, the idea communicating with aliens comes with
concerns.
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has warned that communicating
with aliens could be a threat to Earth: "If aliens visit us, the outcome
would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well
for the Native Americans."
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin depicted the universe as
a jungle with every civilization as a hidden hunter. Those who are exposed will
be eliminated.
But Han Song, another leading Chinese science fiction
writer, believes humans naturally want to simply connect, citing the Internet
as proof. "I think aliens might think similarly. It is a biological
instinct to connect with each other. Everyone wants to prove that they are not
alone in the universe. Loneliness is intolerable to humans," he says.
He also points out that the contact will be driven by
curiosity and real requirements. "Humans will ultimately go to space to
find resources and expand their living area, so it will be hard to avoid
aliens. Contact with them, especially those with more advanced intelligence,
may help us leap forward in civilization."
Regardless of the theoretical debate, scientists have never
wavered in the search. "I think we shall call out. As a matter of fact, we
have been yelling for years, and our radios and televisions are broadcasting in
space all the time," Mao says, "Aren't you curious what our
counterparts would look like?
If they are inferior or equal to us in terms of
civilization, we won't be easily destroyed. If they are much more intelligent
than us, they wouldn't be so narrow-minded as to compete with us. Some worry
they will come to rob us of our natural resources, but they likely have the
power to transform the entire globe already. What's the point of eliminating a
much lower civilization?"
Mao believes the result will be significant however it turns
out. "If we find other life, it will undoubtedly be the most important
scientific discovery in our history; if not, it shows that life on Earth is
unique and we should respect life and cherish each other. No matter the outcome, we shall never stop searching,
and I hope to hear more voices and contributions from Chinese scientists."
Via DailyGalaxy
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