Are we alone in the universe? All of us have asked ourselves this question at least once in our lifetimes. Since 25/09/2016, science has had at its disposal a powerful tool with the help of which it will one day be able to definitively answer this question.

This is the Five-hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST for short, which has been set up in a natural depression near to Pingtang in the south-western province of Guizhou in China. FAST has a diameter of 520 metres and is therefore the largest radio telescope with a spherical primary reflector in the world. It thus supersedes the radio telescope that was built in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 1963 which, with a diameter of 305 metres, has an overall surface almost two-thirds smaller. Indeed, there is an even bigger radio telescope in the world, the Ratan 600 in Russia; however, its reflector is not a dish but a ring made of reflector panels with a diameter of 576 metres. In contrast, FAST’s primary mirror is made up of 4,450 triangular elements placed inside a cable mesh. The reflector is the equivalent of some 30 football pitches.