Science: Descending into the limestone valley where China has chosen to build its paramount telescope is a treacherous hike. So steep and vast is the depression that the few dozen villagers who live at the bottom rarely leave.
Scale is precisely what China is going for with the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), a massive instrument that the government hopes will thrust China to the forefront of radio astronomy.This month, engineers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing will drill into this remote corner of Guizhou Province for a final round of geo-engineering studies before breaking ground later this year.When FAST sees first light in 2014, it will measure more than five football fields in diameter, making it the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world. Related LinkFAST web site (in Chinese)
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
