China Completes Construction of the World's Largest Telescope to Broaden the Search for Alien Life

China has finished building the world's largest radio telescope as the last of the 4,450 triangular-shaped panels was put into place in the reflector.

The telescope, dubbed as Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope or FAST, has the diameter of 500 meters, which is greater than 30 football fields, and is now considered to be the largest radio telescope in the world, overtaking the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which only measures 300 meters in diameter. The telescope will also be 10 times more sensitive than the steerable 100-meter telescope near Bonn, Germany.

"As the world's largest single aperture telescope located at an extremely radio-quiet site, its scientific impact on astronomy will be extraordinary, and it will certainly revolutionize other areas of the natural sciences," Nan Rendong, chief scientist with the FAST Project, told China.org.

The gigantic telescope is located at a karst valley in Pingtang County in the southwestern province of Guizhou. The installation for the FAST started in 2011, displacing more than 9,000 residents in the area. The displaced residents were relocated into four settlements and were given $1,800 in compensation.

The total cost of the project is about 1.2-billion-yuan or about $180 million. Most of the materials used in the telescope are domestically made. Out of the seven FAST receivers, five were made domestically while the remaining two were co-produced by institutions from China, Australia and America.

According to the report from Inquisitr, the new telescope of China will be fully functional by September. It will be used to search and detect any signs of alien life in deep space with its ability to see farther and darker planets.

Many conspiracy theorists have been continuously reporting evidences of extraterrestrial life. They also accused NASA of covering-up any information regarding aliens and UFO sightings. Now, with the availability of a new larger and stronger telescope that is not in direct control of NASA, many theorists claim that finding life in other planets may just be a few years away.