An optional way for Searching Aliens using Radio Telescope
In 2016, China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) – the largest single-aperture radio telescope in the world – gathered its first light. Since then, the telescope has undergone extensive testing and commissioning and officially went online in Jan of 2020. In all that time, it has also been responsible for multiple discoveries, including close to one hundred new pulsars.
According to a recent study by an international team of scientists that FAST might have another use as well: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)! The team included members from the FAST Collaboration, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the University of California Berkeley, the Swinburne University of Technology, Breakthrough Initiatives, the SETI Institute, and multiple universities. With a primary surface measuring 500 m (1640 ft) in diameter – and a maximum effective aperture of 300 m (984 ft), FAST is currently the largest radio telescope in the world and can access a much larger region of the sky than the Arecibo radio telescope. Another major advantage is the fact that FAST is equipped with a 19-beam focal-plane feed horn receiver array, which greatly enhances its field of view. Compare this to the 7 beams of Arecibo and the 13 beams of the Parkes Radio Telescope, both of which have provided unprecedented speed for SETI surveys and efficiency in filtering out radio frequency interference (RFI) from Earth-bound sources. The FAST telescope also benefits from being equipped with the latest in computing hardware, software, and networking. In addition to blind search, FAST will target TESS planets and the Andromeda galaxy. In terms of equivalent isotropic radiation power (EIRP), FAST will be sensitive enough to detect any human-like technologies on TESS planets, i.e., a world with slightly more powerful radar than that of Arecibo. At the distance of Andromeda, FAST can detect Kardashev type II or any civilization more powerful.