A visit to the World’s Largest Radio Telescope | Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope

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Hey guys, my name is Diina from Namibia, Africa.
This video is about a radio telescope known as Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope - a spectacular radio telescope situated at Pingtang, Guizhou province, Southwest China.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is a radio telescope located in the Dawodang depression, a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou, southwest China. It is the world’s largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope, with a receiving area equivalent to 30 football fields. With its innovation design, FAST has broken the 100-meter engineering limit for telescopes construction. It is expected that FAST will maintain its world-class status for the next 20 to 30 years.
Nicknamed as Eye of the Sky, the megascience project foundation was established in December 2008 of which the construction officially commenced in March 2011, and completed in 2016.
The telescope's reflector is reportedly about 300 feet in diameter and made up of 4,450 adjustable panels to realise pointing and tracking as the world’s largest steerable antenna under 3 GHz. The panels are controlled by a computer. Each panel is an equilateral triangle with a side length of about 36 feet. The huge dish is hung over the ground supported by steel pillars and cables, with passages built below it for maintenance, and an upper observation area built upon a nearby hilltop for visitors. The dish is big and we already know that the bigger the dish is, the more capable the telescope is and the weaker messages it will receive. The radio telescope was reportedly founded by Nan Rendong, a Chinese Astronomer, who was a Chief Scientist and Chief Engineer at FAST and has been in charge of the project since 1994, he however passed on on 15 September 2017.
Site:
Pingtang county was identified as the ideal place for building the telescope because of its proper ground, lime ground. FAST was constructed on a naturally deep karst depression situated in mountains, which saved 3.2 billion yuan ($450 million) in excavation costs and which helps shield radio frequency interference. There are no towns within three miles, of which research says it was ideal for minimising sound interference.
The purpose for establishing FAST project:
Research says that for years Chinese scientists have worked on second-hand data collected by other space programs, which prevented China from major breakthroughs. With this giant telescope, Chinese astronomers will no longer have to rely on second-hand data but will allow their own military-run space program to gather their own data. Hence with this spectacular telescope, China hopes to achieve below goals:
 To investigate the universe, particularly to detect neutral hydrogen to the edge of the universe and reconstruct the images of the early universe;
 To discover pulsar, establish a pulsar timing array, and participate in pulsar navigation
and gravitational wave detection;
 To detect weak space signals;
 To participate in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
 To advance tourism
Discoveries:
FAST has discovered more than 740 pulsars, greatly expanding the boundaries of human observation of the universe and this makes it the most efficient pulsar discovery telescope in the world, it also picks up sounds from outer space.
Benefits:
Sensitive telescope - Having a more sensitive telescope, helps China in receiving weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help them search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe.
Scientific research - Located in a karst depression in Pingtang county, Southwest China’s Guizhou province, the telescope has helped scientists make important scientific research achievements.
Tourism - The telescope has benefited the remote county’s residents with tourism brought about by the flow of tourists.
AI in the aid for astronomy work
Chinese technology giant Tencent plans to utilise artificial intelligence to assist the radio telescope in the search for pulsars and the exploration of the universe. Tencent Cloud can help process the huge data received from the telescope and finds clues to pulsars through visual AI analysis.
China aspires to make the world’s first landing on the far side of the moon.
Sources of information used in the video:
Tour guide to the site
en.wikipedia.org
fast.bao.ac.cn
english.nao.cas.cn
en.wikipedia.org
www.csmonitor.com
www.globaltimes.cn
en.qstheory.cn
en.m.wikipedia.org
DISCLAIMER: All photos of the radio telescope used in the video were downloaded from various Chinese and other sites and each photo is credited as such, only on instances where the photo appears twice. This channel did not take any photo of the telescope because electronic interferences are strictly prohibited at the site.