China’s new sci-fi feature film The Wandering Earth -adapted from a novella of the same name by Liu Cixin, author of the Hugo Award-winning The Three-Body Problem– opens with a crisis of unprecedented proportions: the sun has become unstable, and within a hundred years, it will expand to consume Earth.
China’s FAST radio telescope, with a dish the size of 30 football fields, measuring 500 meters in diameter, dwarfing Puerto Rico’s 300-meter Arecibo Observatory, will launch its astronomers into the nation’s role as the new space superpower cinched with its epic landing of the Chang’e-4 Rover this week on the Moon’s far side. FAST could double the known pulsar tally of 2,000, says Peng Bo, FAST’s deputy manager and acting observatory director. It’s also ideal for mapping gas clouds between stars and for listening for signals from alien civilizations.
