New
Scientist: China has started building the world’s
biggest and most sensitive radio telescope—the
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, an
instrument that promises to transform radio astronomy, writes
Anil Ananthaswamy for
New Scientist. The instrument, which will be located
near the city of Duyun in Guizhou Province, will allow
astronomers to peer three times farther into the universe than
any previous telescope. Although its dish will be fixed in an
800-meter-wide karst—a sinkhole formed by eons of water
eroding limestone bedrock—a series of large motors will
be able to change the shape of the dish’s reflective
surface, allowing it to scan large swaths of the sky.
