World's largest Chinese radio telescope goes online

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Days before the operation of the world's largest radio telescope began, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) has gone online in China.

FAST, as it is popularly known is the most advanced and carefully tuned radio telescope around the globe.

Apart from having the greatest total surface area, it is also capable of changing its shape to tack objects in the sky with high precision.

It will be used to study gravitational waves, dark matter and fast radio bursts.

Work on the telescope began nearly 1.2 billion-yuan ($180 million) project started in 2011, 17 years after it was proposed by Chinese astronomers.