China's Giant FAST Telescope Makes Its First Discoveries
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China's Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) has started making its first discoveries since being turned on last September.
According to the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world has picked up two rapidly rotating stars, known as pulsars.
These objects can act like 'cosmic clocks' when they spin at a steady rate, and can even give us clues to phenomena such as gravitational waves.
Pulsars are the remains of long-dead stars, the cores of supergiants left over from the explosions that consumed them. They're small, dense, and spin very quickly.
A typical pulsar can make several rotations in a single second.
Credit: PA
Pulsars also have very powerful magnetic fields. Whilst rotating, these trigger the emission of radio waves which are broadcast out across the universe and can occasionally be picked up here on Earth.
Being the largest radio telescope in existence, China's Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope is capable of picking these signals up from further away than anything else on Earth.
"Being bigger means it collects more light," Michael Nolan, of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told the New Scientist. "So if you're looking at a faint signal, it'll be brighter in the bigger telescope."
One of the pulsars the telescope found is located more than 16,000 lightyears away.
"It is truly encouraging to have achieved such results within just one year," Peng Bo, deputy director of FAST, told China Daily.
The discovery may not seem too significant, but it really is.
Credit: PA
Scientists can study the radio waves emitted by the pulsars to get an idea of what they passed through before arriving here.
This can help them to fill in the empty spaces and to build a more detailed map of the universe around us.
"FAST is going to become central in developing a new map of our universe that is going to be used for all sorts of science. It will probably be many decades before a better map is created," said Marko Krco, a visiting U.S. astronomer at the NAOC.
As well as mapping out the universe, FAST is also being used as a tool in the search for extra-terrestrial life.
It is situated in a remote, mountainous area of Guizhou Province in south-western China, which will help protect it from radio-wave interference, from signals sent by things like cell phones and Wi-Fi.
