China begins hunt for aliens with world's largest £140m radio telescope set to 'listen out for extraterrestrial life'
The Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, has been five years in the making was finally launched in Beijing to the glee of hundreds of onlooking astronomers and enthusiasts
China has launched the world's largest radio telescope in a bid to start searching for aliens .
The £140 million project, measuring 500m in diameter, searches for signals from stars and galaxies and listens out for extraterrestrial life.
Beijing's latest ambitious space programme surpasses the 300m Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a Nobel Prize-winning dish used in star research.
The official Xinhua News Agency said hundreds of astronomers and space enthusiasts watched the launch of the Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in the county of Pingtang.
Researchers said FAST's ultimate goal is to "discover the laws of the development of the universe".
READ MORE: World's largest telescope soon to aid alien-hunting expeditions as £125m facility nears completionQian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , told state broadcaster CCTV: "In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar (spinning neutron star) is approaching us."
The epic 4,450-panel structure was first developed in 2011 and finally completed in July.
FAST’s location in a natural karst depression is said to be perfect for some of the much needed "radio silence", with the nearest inhabited town three miles away.
Around 9,000 villagers had to relocate to make way for the facility.
It is 10 times more sensitive than Europe's nearest comparison , the steerable 100m telescope near Bonn in Germany.