China begins operating world’s largest radio telescope

[velodrome]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b51775577335473b9dfa783b6e293965/china-begins-operating-worlds-largest-radio-telescope

[cianuro]

Don't use the sun as an amplification vector and attract Extraterrestrial attention!

[qd6pwu4 → cianuro]

Haha, Three Body is a great fiction story

[merpnderp → qd6pwu4]

Spoiler alert, that's still in my TOREAD list :/

[cianuro → merpnderp]

Sorry :( You should still definitely read it! It's an excellent story.

[tavish1 → qd6pwu4]

can you please delete this, this is a spoiler (not the parent comment)

[ryanmarsh]

Everyone remembers what Arecibo was originally built for right?

[TeMPOraL → ryanmarsh]

I don't, and for those who like me didn't know:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#Design_and...

Apparently it was initially meant to help identify re-entering warheads so that they could be shot down before hitting their targets.

[ryanmarsh → TeMPOraL]

Or pick up radio signals from Russia when they bounced off the moon... https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

[daeken]

The article mentions searching for gravitational waves. Anyone have info on how they might accomplish that via radio telescope?

[ngoldbaum → daeken]

Pulsar timing arrays: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar_timing_array

[daeken → ngoldbaum]

Ah hah! I thought it might be something like that, but figured there was something I wasn't considering. Thanks for the link.

[lwde]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d27ZWhOM2W8

[ddon]

Strange that the last news from FAST was on August 9th: http://fast.bao.ac.cn/en/index_eng.html

Basically for month and a half pretty much no press releases from them.

[leesalminen]

I didn't see it in the article, but I recently heard that NIST played a role in the design of this telescope.

[srikar]

Sad this was promoted instead of this submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12574669

That is the original ap.org link

[sctb → srikar]

Sorry your submission didn't come out on top, but thanks for the link! We've updated the URL of this one from http://phys.org/news/2016-09-china-world-largest-radio-teles....

[billforsternz → sctb]

I love the light handed, thoughtful, considered moderation on HN. The contrast with Stack Overflow (as per an active thread at the moment) is stark. Well done, please keep it up.