Chinese authorities plan to evacuate 9,110 people from their homes to make way for what will be the world's largest radio telescope, China's state-owned Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.
The government-funded Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, will be able to detect and receive signals from outer space and help search for extraterrestrial intelligence, according to its official website. Under construction since 2011, it's slated for completion this September and costs 1.2 billion yuan, or about $184 million, Xinhua says.
FAST is being built in the country's southwestern province of Guizhou, a rural mountainous area where millions of inhabitants live in poverty. Provincial authorities say they plan to pay 12,000 yuan ($1,837) to each resident living within a 3.1-mile radius of the site to relocate.
The telescope is meant to function in a "sound electromagnetic environment," per Xinhua, but it's not exactly clear what that means. In Green Bank, West Virginia, home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, residents are instructed not to use cell phones, microwaves and other devices that may interfere with the radio frequency the telescope is meant to pick up, according to a CNN report.
Guizhou's government plans to move locals to four settlements by the end of September, the state news agency noted, but did not say when the relocation process would begin or where the residents would be moved.
FAST's main reflector will have a diameter of about 1,640 feet and will consist of cables and panels designed to detect and reflect radio signals from space to a single receiver that will record them.
The size of the telescope's reflector will surpass that of Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, which has a diameter of about 1,000 feet and is currently the world's largest single-aperture radio telescope. FAST will also be able to cover "two to three times more sky area," the telescope's official website said.
In fact, FAST will be so big that "if you fill it with wine, every one of the world's seven billion people could get a share of about five bottles," Li Di, the chief scientist of China's National Astronomical Observatories, told China Daily in November.
China has invested heavily in its space program in recent years. In 2003, it dispatched the Shenzhou V spacecraft to orbit the Earth 14 times, becoming the third country after the U.S. and Russia to successfully send a human into space. China also launched its first space laboratory in 2011 and plans to place a manned space station in orbit in the 2020s.
Alien Abductees -- In Their Own Words
CYNTHIA(01 of10)
Open Image ModalWhen I was in my thirties, I found out from my father about a government experiment that I was part of in which they were using other alien DNA to create me. I also have been on the ships most of my life off and on. I've had lots of contacts. ... I was being taken. I've been taken on ships quite a bit.I've met Salamander beings and I've met Greys. I've also met the Blue Arcturians which are incredible. They all have their own personalities and their own purposes. ... I've also met the Cat People that are from Sirius. I've actually seen people that can shape shift from human looking to Reptilians.As far as the abductions, I've had numerous of them where they've shown me around various ships. ... They've also explained ... why they're here and how they're here to help humanity. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
STEPHEN(02 of10)
Open Image ModalI was on a mother ship. I was walking along a gantry and I was looking down to my left and my right and a little Grey had my hand and I could see different types of spacecraft all below.I could see different human looking people and aliens coming and going on these crafts. The Grey brought me into a little room, the door slid open and he just told me in my mind, "Sit here and wait, I'll be back." ... Then he brought me to another bigger room. It was an auditorium with stadium seating. There was a podium down at the bottom and he led me to a seat and all around me were some humans ... but there was a lot of all different types of alien beings. Next thing I'm leaving. I'm telling them, "I want to stay ... I belong." And they said, "No, it's not your time. You have to help save this planet Earth." That's all I remember. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
JILL(03 of10)
Open Image ModalThese beings call themselves pure light beings and they were a collective of beings that were here to assist humanity. And they came through with this message ... about shifting conscious for humankind at this time. They would be doing things to my aura or to my energy and I could feel them. I could see visual images of them activating something in my conscious. ... They're helping us in our evolutionary process and all of these events that are happening, that people are experiencing such as abductions are to help us evolve as a species. Our actual DNA is being shifted so our physical bodies are actually becoming lighter in frequency and they're helping us to do this. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
SASHA(04 of10)
Open Image ModalI was lying breathing deep and fast to the powerful evocative music and there I was. My consciousness was in the middle of this huge dome like structure. The inside of the structure was white and then there were coves in it that were big enough for people to sit in meditation and they were sitting cross legged. Some of them wore white robes. Some of them had long hair. They were all humanoid. There were some I couldn't quite tell what they were. But I got the feeling they were a type of human. Some of them were huge. Some of them were small and they were all in their coves and it was all part of this huge dome and the atmosphere in this place was absolutely beautiful. It was golden light and the background was white, like it was whitewashed and it was a place of meditating on peace and love. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
NANCY(05 of10)
Open Image ModalIn the summer of 1961 when I was twelve years old, I was at my girlfriends house and we were playing and her father yelled for us to come outside, he wanted us to see something. When we walked outside we immediately saw a giant silver craft. It was silently hovering above a tree. It had red, green and white lights that I thought at the time were rotating but I realize they were pulsating. Someone called the police. ... And then there was a car coming down the road. There was a tree here and a craft here and a car coming down the road and as it got right underneath the craft, a beam of light came out of the bottom and it went right to the roof of the car and as soon as it touched the car the car was totally immobilized. I just remember screaming and being excited and jumping up and down. ... And at the end of the first regression I remember seeing that my body was rumbling, was a word I never used. My body was rumbling and waving to the low hum of the craft and that was the end of the first regression. In the second regression, I actually remember being aboard and a procedure that was performed on me. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
JOHN(06 of10)
Open Image ModalThese beings came into my room. We walked through the wall out into the woods and there were two deer in suspended animation and then this, as I learned these were Zetas, I didn't know what they were called at the time brought me over to this tree. We sat down, he was drawing in the dirt; the earth and the moon and then all these lines way over to the far end of the patch of dirt and that told me that was where they were from. ... And the next thing I know I see myself on a ship and the stain glass window started off being what looked like a window out into space and it was looking at the earth and the moon but then it turned to the stain glass window and every time the colors changed I got zapped with energy. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
JANET(07 of10)
Open Image ModalDecember 1995 I landed on Johnson atoll which is an island eight hundred miles southwest in the pacific ocean and I was a civilian working for the military and when I landed there a man came over and said, "You've landed on a joint US military ET base." And I said, "Oh really?" So a year later in 1996 I was sleeping in my bed and suddenly I'm being carried by six of the traditional ET's with the large heads and large eyes. There are there military on either side walking and I'm screaming bloody murder. ... And the Grey on the right hand side the one that was carrying my foot said, "Go ahead and scream all you want.You're in an energy field and no one could hear you." (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
BRUCE(08 of10)
Open Image ModalThese doors open. This ramp goes down and I follow this guy out, down this ramp. I was standing on dirt and I was wondering where I was at. And right in the sky to my left was a huge moon like body and in the immediate background was Saturn. And I could see hundreds and hundreds of rings. And I said, "Where am I?" and he said, "You're on one of the moons of Saturn." I said, "Why did you bring me here?" And he said, "Because these two moons are going opposite directions. They get to a certain point and they revolve around each other and go back the opposite direction. I just wanted you to see that." Well the thing is after he showed it to me, they took me back in, he knocked me out and when I woke up the next morning I was in my bed. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
RITA(09 of10)
Open Image ModalI have had experiences since I was a child. I had a series of dreams which was sort of unusual for a seven or eight year old child, which in my forties began to unravel into experiences with Reptilians and that eventually culminated with showing them my child. ... He's Reptilian. You know. He's not human. He's sort of golden. Reptilian kind of head. Sort of mottled skin. Kind of of more claw like hands and feet. A Reptilian. Not human like me. ... I've had a lot of experiences with Reptilians. Some of them not very nice. But the ones from my childhood were all pretty ok. They never hurt me or did anything to frighten me or anything like that until much later. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
SEBASTIEN(10 of10)
Open Image ModalAll my life I've had visions which I could never control. I was originally abducted when I was sixteen years old. I was lifted up in the air. There was no gravity. I was lifted straight up and eventually I basically turned this way on my back and getting into a spaceship. It was a small spaceship, round. It was basically like a vertical opening. Rectangular shape. I didn't see any doors and as I was basically brought into the spacecraft, I saw about seven tall Grey aliens with small mouths and big eyes, black. I was in that position and I wasn't really feeling any fear. I wasn't scared. (credit:Courtesy of Steven Hirsch)
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