Residents within 5km radius of Fast project in Guizhou province will be forced to leave their homes and offered £1,275 in compensation 
 
 China is to relocate more than 9,000 people before the unveiling of the world’s largest radio telescope later this year – a move that Beijing hopes will boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life. 
 
 Work on the 1.2bn yuan (£127m) Fast (Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope) project began in the south-western province of Guizhou in 2011 and is expected to be completed by September. 
 
 
 
 Before then 9,110 residents of Guizhou’s Pingtang and Luodian counties will be “evacuated” from their homes, the Xinhua news agency announced on Tuesday. Each will receive 12,000 yuan (£1,275) in compensation from the government’s eco-migration bureau, Xinhua added. 
 
 Li Yuecheng, a senior Communist party official in Guizhou, said the relocations, from an area within a 5km radius of the project, would help “create a sound electromagnetic wave environment”. 
 
 
 
 Beijing sees its 500 metre-diameter telescope, which will dwarf the 300 metre-diameter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, as the latest symbol of its growing technological prowess. 
 
 
 
 One of the scientists behind the project recently claimed that if the telescope was filled with wine, each of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants could fill about five bottles from it. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Local villagers look at the construction site of the telescope. Photograph: Imaginechina/REX/Shutterstock 
 
 But the telescope is intended as a pioneering scientific endeavour, not a super-sized decanter. According to recent reports in Chinese state media, Fast is made up of 4,450 triangular-shaped panels. Once the telescope is fully functional, those movable panels will be used to reflect radio signals from distant parts of the universe towards a 30-tonne retina capable of gathering them, the China Daily newspaper reported during tests last November. 
 
 China's giant telescope represents its big ambitions for science Read more 
 
 In an interview last year, Nan Rendong, a senior scientist on the project, said: “A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe. It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm.” 
 
 Wu Xiangping, the director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, told Xinhua that Fast’s high level of sensitivity would help scientists to “search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe”. 
 
 Last year Shi Zhicheng, a Chinese astronomer, told the South China Morning Post that the telescope represented a giant leap in the hunt for alien life. “If intelligent aliens exist, the messages that they produced or left behind, if they are being transmitted through space, can be detected and received by Fast,” Shi said. 
 
 Chinese officials say the telescope’s location in Qiannan, an isolated region deep in Guizhou’s spectacular Karst mountains, is the ideal place to detect possible extraterrestrial messages. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Technicians work at the assembly site telescope. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock 
 
 Li Di, a scientist from the Chinese Academy Of Sciences, said Fast would allow Beijing to “explore deeper into space and look at asteroids and even Mars”. He told China’s state broadcaster CCTV last year: “It will give China an opportunity to conduct frontier research.” 
 
 In an editorial celebrating China’s scientific triumph last July, the South China Morning Post boasted: “If we are ever to make contact with aliens, China may play a key role … our eyes and ears are closing in on the possibility of life on another planet.” 
 
 Massive relocation projects have long been a Communist party speciality. Millions of Chinese citizens have been displaced in recent decades to make way for hydro-electric dams and other infrastructure projects or as part of “poverty alleviation” schemes. Those forced from their homes often complain of poor compensation. ||||| More than 9,000 people are being relocated in China before the opening of the world’s largest radio telescope later this year. 
 
 The $180 million Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the southwestern province of Guizhou is expected to be completed in September says Xinhua News Agency. Once finished, it will become the world’s largest, overtaking the 300-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. 
 
 According a senior Communist party official in Guizhou, Li Yuecheng, residents within 3 miles of the telescope had to be relocated so as to “create a sound electromagnetic wave environment.” These “evacuated” residents will get up to $1,800 in compensation from the country’s provincial reservoir and eco-migration bureau. 
 
 The radio telescope, which measures 500 meters in diameter, will be used to reflect radio signals from distant parts of the universe and help search for extraterrestrial life beyond the galaxy, reports the Guardian.
– In what would make for a decent episode of The X-Files, the Chinese government is forcing more than 9,000 residents from their homes in order to better search for alien life in the cosmos. China started work on FAST—the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope—back in 2011, Xinhua reports. It's scheduled to be completed this September. But first 9,110 residents living within three miles of the project need to be relocated in order to—in the words of one Chinese official—"create a sound electromagnetic wave environment." According to the Guardian, such relocations are a "Communist Party specialty," with millions having been moved in recent decades to make room for infrastructure projects. Relocated residents will receive a little more than $1,800 each for their trouble. Once complete, FAST will be the largest radio telescope in the world—200 meters greater in diameter than the current biggest in Puerto Rico. One scientist on the project explained its size in terms of wine, for some reason, stating that if FAST were filled with wine, all 7 billion people on Earth could each fill five bottles from it. The Chinese government hopes to use the telescope to look for signs of extraterrestrial life and study the origins of the universe. Its size will make a difficult job slightly easier. "A radio telescope is like a sensitive ear, listening to tell meaningful radio messages from white noise in the universe," the Guardian quotes a FAST scientist as saying. "It is like identifying the sound of cicadas in a thunderstorm.” Time reports FAST will cost $180 million. (Maybe we can't find aliens because they don't evolve quickly enough.)