Giant Radio Telescope
Employees install a signage of the 54th Research Institute of CETC (China Electronic Technology Group Corporation), which takes the main responsibility of the research and development tasks of a massive radio telescope, at the foot of the telescope in Shanghai October 28, 2012 Reuters/Stringer

China is facing criticisms over the construction of a giant radio telescope that aims to search for extraterrestrials. However, the anger is not over the purpose of the facility but because to build the observatory, more than 9,000 residents were displaced.

Called Five-hundred meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST, the humongous telescope measures 1,640 feet wide. It is almost twice the size of the current record-holder in Puerto Rico. FAST uses 460,000 reflective mirror for radio signals emitted on its 30-tonne antennae in the hope of Beijing winning the space race to confirm the existence of aliens.

However, beyond the $184 million (AUD$257 million) tag price of the venture, what caught the ire of Chinese is that more than 9,000 people were displaced from their homes in Shanghai because of FAST. But Gizmodo points out that being moved against their will is nothing new in the communist nation.

It happened before in 2010 when China was building the Three Gorges Dam which had 300,000 people displaced from their homes. To build the famous bird’s nest and other sporting facilities for the 2008 Summer Olympics which Beijing hosted, more than 1 million Chinese were also forcibly removed from their homes. The website reckoned that since the 1970s, more than 40 million Chinese had been forcibly displayed because of several infrastructure or public works projects.

Alien-hunting has been given a stronger boost in the science community after the recent discovery of an Earth-like planet and gravitational waves. According to Shi Zhicheng, a Chinese astronomer, FAST was built to capture radio transmission which are over 1,000 lightyears away, reports The South China Morning Post.

The telescope, built over five years and expected to end construction phase in Sept 2016, would be the sensitive "ear" needed to identify the faint transmissions from the universe which is full of radioactive noise. Without that sensitive listening device, the distant signals – compared to the cicadas singing during a thunder storm – would not be identified, says Nan Rendong, FAST chief scientist.

RELATED STORIES