With extremely high sensitivity, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) has enabled scientists to discover a large number of pulsars and radio signals.
China’s 500-meter aperture radio telescope. (Photo: Xinhua News Agency)
Nestled among the limestone mountains in Guizhou Province, southwestern China, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), also known as Tianyan (Heavenly Eye), began its first discoveries in August 2017 by detecting two new pulsars located 4,100 and 16,000 light-years away. After a period of testing, the massive instrument officially became fully operational in January 2020 and is recognized as the most sensitive radio telescope in the world.
In a recent post on December 15, the Xinhua News Agency reported that FAST has helped scientists identify over 500 new pulsars since October 2017.
Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars formed from the collapsed core of massive dead stars during supernova events. With their dense material and fast rotation, they are ideal subjects for studying physical laws in extreme environments.
Using FAST, scientists have also discovered a total of 1,652 independent bursts from a single repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source, codenamed FRB121102.
According to Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the principal scientist of FAST, this is the largest collection of FRB events ever detected in history, and these results were published in the journal Nature in October. Astronomers believe it may help illuminate the origins of the so-called “mysterious signals from deep space“.
Since March 2021, when FAST officially opened for international projects, the world’s most sensitive telescope has received approximately 200 observation requests from 16 countries worldwide.
