Big (500m) Chinese radio telescope FAST
19 Oct 2015 16:30:05 UTC
Topic 198279
(moderation:
I'm a pretty avid general news consumer, and was completely ignorant of the fact there is a large Chinese radio telescope project under construction, which to a very quick first approximation looks like a 50% larger diameter Arecibo, though I'm sure important differences loom large to those skilled in the art.
. 500 meter aperture, vs. 305 for Arecibo.
. Reflecting surface is installed in a convenient valley
. and does not move
. figure is spherical, not parabolic
. limited aiming by moving a receiver suspended over the reflector
While I stumbled across this in an article in the online magazine Slate (including some riveting under construction video), here is a somewhat more general treatment.
As it is to some degree Arecibo-like, and as Arecibo signals have been analyzed here at Einstein, my excuse for this post, (which is really motivated by the thought some of you might find it interesting, and not yet be aware of it) is to raise the eventual possibility that we at Einstein might get some FAST-sourced data to crunch.
Big (500m) Chinese radio telescope FAST
)
At first it does look like the ART but it makes that look tiny.
They say it should be ready next September.
Maybe we could have used a Moon crater to do this if we started back in the 1970's and 80's
*Unlike Arecibo, which has a fixed spherical curvature, FAST will use an active surface that adjusts to create parabolas in different directions, with an effective dish size of 300 m.
This means that it will not be confined to pointing directly upwards, but capable of covering the sky within 40° from the zenith.
Its working frequency will be 70 MHz to 3.0 GHz, with a pointing precision of 4 arcseconds.
RE: As it is to some
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There are no concrete plans for that as far as I am aware of. Also it is not uncommon that science groups more closely related to the institutes that co-fund/own/operate such instruments get the first take on analysing the data, and only then the data is passed on to other interested parties. You don't spend 100s of Mios of $ so others get the fame :-). Much (not all) of the radioastronomy data we crunch here on Einstein has also been looked at by other groups already (which didn't stop us from making discoveries in that data).
HB
Well if they want to do a
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Well if they want to do a FAST@Home then I'm up for it ! We do have many mainland Chinese contributors here so it would be a neat cross-cultural thingy in the spirit of the worldwide citizen science paradigm. However I do believe there is more to come from their Tianhe line of UberCalculators, despite their recent explosive problems at Tianjin.
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Nice catch Peter. Do keep up the news scan. :-)))
( edit ) Regardless of specs, which are quite impressive for sure, this is just gorgeous ( Tianhe-2 ):
... if I become a billionaire I will make a basement for this under my house and put one in. You can all come and work as highly overpriced sys-admins, full medical and dental etc. Plus the best MineCraft ever. Anyone interested ?? :-))
( edit ) Correction. Multi-billionaire.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: However I do believe
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More recently, their biggest problem seemed to be export-restrictions, but they probably have found a way around that. See this for the story:
http://www.theplatform.net/2015/07/15/china-intercepts-u-s-intel-restrictions-with-homegrown-supercomputer-chips/
so indeed, there will be more to come from this installation. 100 PetaFlops from 18 MW power would be not so shabby.
HB
RE: ... if I become a
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I'm in Mike ! I'll be the official RAC monitor and electric company liaison.
Bill
RE: RE: ... if I become a
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The quoted cost of Tianhe 2 is ~ $400M USD, so maybe I won't need to be a multi-$B after all. However as you have replied so soon you will get your job picks as indicated ! I assume that I will be able to get the relevant import/export permits for the Intel gear. Failing that then Intel could set up a chip-fab just down the road from me. For peak power loads I will put more wombats in the running mills. :-)
Cheers, Mike.
( edit ) Interestingly while it would pull 17.6 MWatts max for computing, that in turn requires another ~7 MWatts to cool !
( edit ) From memory I think Syracuse use the 'waste heat' from a computing centre of theirs for other uses.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: RE: ... if I become a
)
Yeah Bill I will meet you there the same day since getting this high paying job and a doctor at the same time would make it easier to talk the wife into doing that (still have to keep my place here since I have over 30 years on this property) and I will set up our satellite system so we get everything on my 100inch DLP HDTV (I guess Mike could afford to ship my cars down undah too)
RE: RE: RE: ... if I
)
I can transport your entire property DownUnda if you want. I will ask Elon, who will be my $BFF [ Billionaire Friend Forever* ] by then, to pop a satellite up for us ! :-)
Cheers, Mike.
* NB Chum Creek will be a Zuckerberg Free Zone though.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
RE: I can transport your
)
You will like my 5 acres once you get it moved down undah Mike
Creek and pond full of trout (maybe salmon too) several palm trees,40 Giant Sequoias,and I guess I should bring the deer with their favorite apple tree and I guess the mallards will ride in the pond with the fish..
Three types of Magnolias that I planted over 25 years ago so they are huge.
I guess I better bring my house since I built the crazy thing about 13 years ago.......and I do have 4 satellite dishes and I tend to save things so I have quite an electronics stash we could use for things from computers to satellite communications and I used to be a high-fi R&D guy for a world famous magnetic field and vacuum tube physicist so I still have all of his stuff.
I have watched a few tv shows we have here that show these comapaniesw that move houses bigger than mine and are real good at that as long as I duct tape everything to the floor so they don't move around on this long voyage .....see you when we get there Mike (oh and I hope you don't mind watching NBA and NFL games with some Yankees games tossed in }
RE: You will like my 5
)
Good plan ! Bring your Tesla coil too. Yankees is a WhackTheBall team aren't they ? :-)
Cheers, Mike.
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal