> Radio telescopes are usually quite large, if not as large as the FAST. Do you know why? > What advantages do space telescopes have over land telescopes? And land telescopes over space telescopes? The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) Construction began in 2011 in the Chinese province of Guizhou . Its 4 450 panels form a circular structure of 500 metres in diameter, an area equivalent to that of 30 football fields. This makes it the world’s largest radio telescope. It is also the most powerful . Its main mission is to search for clues about the origin of the universe and to advance the search for extraterrestrial life. However, according to its creators, it will also provide astronomers with new information on distant galaxies; detect dark matter and energy ; and discover new pulsars, neutron stars that emit intense radiation . In addition , it will allow scientists to locate carbon molecules more accurately than before. National Geographic Spain (Adapted) NASA’s James Webb space telescope Webb, the largest and most complex space telescope ever built, is able to gather light that has been travelling for 13.5 billion years, almost since the beginning of the universe. In ef fect, Webb is a time machine, allowing us to obser ve the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang. Because it gathers infrared light, it sees right through the giant clouds of dust that block the view of most other telescopes. With its 6.5-metre-wide set of segmented mirrors, Webb is powerful enough to search for water vapour in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. It is able to obser ve these exoplanets, in wavelengths of light at which they have never been seen before. It will provide new insights about their nature, and search for signs of habitability. Webb will help us understand how galaxies evolve over billions of years. NASA Bulletin (Adapted) The FAST be came ope rat ional i n 2016 James Webb wa s l aunched i n De c embe r 202 1 5
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