China has finished the installation of the world's largest radio telescope. The last of the telescope's 4,450 triangular panels was fitted into the dish this weekend, ahead of the telescope's planned launch in September. It is the size of 30 soccer fields, and has taken over five years and $180 million to build. It is nearly twice as big as the next largest radio telescope — the 300-meter-wide Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.
"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," said Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences — the organisation that built the telescope.
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