Sky Eye, the world's largest and most powerful radio telescope, has begun working hard to unravel the mystery of the birth of the universe. Set on a hill in southern China, the telescope looks up at the sky with a huge metal body. It started working fully on January 12. The official name of the telescope is the five-hundred-meter aperture spherical telescope. Briefly known as ‘Fast’. As the name implies, it is half a kilometer wide. China loves to call it Sky Eye.
The telescope is now exploring the deepest and darkest places in the universe. Trying to figure out how this world was created. This state-of-the-art telescope will also examine the existence of life on planets other than the solar system in space. Sky Eye is 2.5 times more efficient than any radio telescope currently in operation. Discussions about this telescope began in the nineties. Construction of Sky Eye took almost two decades to complete. In 2016, its effectiveness was tested for the first time.
The creators of Sky Eye hope that the signals it will be able to capture will unravel the mystery of the creation of the universe and the information about evolution. Its main function is to search for gravitational waves. It will also study the dark elements of the universe. Scientists hope the galaxy's dynamics can be monitored with this Chinese telescope.
The most striking feature of Sky Eye is its ability to quickly detect data from the universe's wave blasts (FRB's). Such intense energy explosions last only a thousandth of a second. However, the cause of such an explosion is still unknown.
Min Eun, a professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, says Sky Eye will greatly increase the ability of astronomers to search for cosmic signals. In the meantime, it has identified 102 new pulsars during its first test. A pulsar is a type of rotating star that emits radiation at regular intervals.
"This is a remarkable achievement," said Bill McCutcheon, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia.