The Chinese are building a 'Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope'(FAST)
in Pingtang county, Guizhou province.
It will be the largest and most sensitive single dish radio telescope in the world
that will transform radio astronomy.
It is being built in a Chinese sinkhole much like the Arecibo telescope, except that it will use all the area of its 500 meter dish, unlike Arecibo that can only use about 221 meters of its 305 meter dish.
This is because FAST's panels sit virtually on the ground are able to be controlled, move and collect the focused signal and study 19 regions of the sky simultaneously in different bands of the radio spectrum. Arecibo can only study seven regions at a time. So FAST will be able to survey radio sources far faster and further away than any existing radio telescope.
Tens of thousands of new galaxies – invisible to optical telescopes – will come into focus as FAST picks up on faint radio emissions from the neutral hydrogen gas they contain.
Closer to home, FAST has agreed join the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI, a huge boost in the search for extraterrestrial life,
FAST's sensitivity is so great that it will be able to pick up the transmissions of an Alien, a 1000 light years away....using his mobile phone.
FAST, is being assembled now, and will be complete and working by 2016.
China also plans to build an Antartic telescope array, near Kunium on the Antartic circle.
They also plan to build, or float, a metallised plastic reflecting telescope into a suitable depression on the Moon!
Those last two items I have gleaned from the Chinadaily.com.cn
http://news.discovery.com/space/monster-chinese-telescope-the-next-et-hunter-110621.html
