In China, SETI research is just starting to gain popularity. Yet Zhang, a professor of cosmology at Beijing Normal University, is already convinced his country could be the first to detect a signal from another world. “We will probably find it first,” Zhang tells Sixth Tone in his cramped Beijing office. “They (the West) have more experience, but … our telescope can detect things theirs can’t.” China’s trump card is the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) — a giant observatory built on a mountaintop in the southwestern Guizhou province in 2016. The facility is the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, around 2.5 times more powerful than any previous instrument of its kind. Many consider FAST to be a game-changer for SETI, as it could be capable of picking up signals from outer space… (READ MORE)

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