
Thousands of villagers in China have been ordered by the country to assist in its ambitious alien-hunting project - by moving their homes for the world's largest radio telescope.

Around 9,110 people from the Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, have been asked to relocate by the authorities in order to provide a better environment for the radio waves, the People's Daily Online reports.

The 'Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope' or 'FAST', which cost a whopping £124 million to build, is due to start operation this year after a five-year construction process.

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The search for extra terrestrial life: Ongoing construction of the world's largest radio telescope in Guizhou province, southwest China

Big piece of machinery: The Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope is the size of 30 football pitches

9,100 relocated: Villagers within 5 kilometres have been asked to make way for telescope which will be used for capturing radio signals

The telescope is situated in a huge karst valley in Pingtang County, a rural area of Guizhou province, where a lot of residents are poor.

Residents within three miles of the site will be reportedly given a 12,000 Yuan (£1,288) subsidy to relocate, with some getting extra financial support for housing.

The new telescope will overtake the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to become the world's largest radio telescope. It has a diameter of 1,640 feet and occupies an area as large as 30 football pitches.

It took the Chinese scientists as long as 17 years to find a hollow in the country large enough to accommodate the dish.

Li Di, a chief scientist from the National Astronomical Observatories affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences told China Daily: 'FAST is so large that if you fill it with wine, every one of the world's seven billion people could get a share of about five bottles'.

Li Yuecheng, secretary-general of the CPPCC Guizhou Provincial Committee says that the relocations will 'create a sound electromagnetic wave environment'.

The new telescope is set to be involved in the search for extra terrestrial life. With its sensitive telescope, it can detect weaker radio signals.

It is also due to be used to study the Milky Way in more detail and look for the first shining stars.

'FAST' has a diameter of 1,640 feet and is located in the Dawodang depression, a huge karst valley in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province

Largest in the world: When it is completed in September this year, it will over take Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico for size

Diameter of 1,640 feet: It took scientists 17 years to find a hollow area in the country large enough to accommodate the dish

'FAST' marks the biggest investment in astronomy by China as it continues to invest in its own space programme.

The country hopes to have its own space station by around 2020 and in the future conduct a manned mission to the moon.

This isn't the first time that China has conducted mass relocations.

Between 1995 and 2005, 1.4 million people were relocated in south-west China to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

While an unknown number of people were asked to move to make way for the Olympic sites in Beijing.

WE COULD FIND ALIEN LIFE IN THE NEXT 10 TO 20 YEARS, SAYS NASA There at least 200 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy – and now NASA officials claim we could be on the verge of finding life on one. During a talk in Washington last year, the space agency announced that humanity is likely to encounter extra-terrestrials within a decade. 'We are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years,' Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for NASA. 'We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology.' Advertisement

The search for extraterrestrial life is a worldwide project.

Last year, a new $100m project by Breakthough Initiative was launched using two of the world's biggest telescopes to scour through one million of the closest stars to Earth for signals sent out by intelligent life.

The project will cover 10 times more sky and be 50 times more sensitive than previous searches.

The latest data collected by NASA and other space agencies suggests there could be as many as 40 billion potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.

Experts say that if a civilisation was broadcasting signals with the power of common aircraft radar from one of the 1,000 nearest stars to Earth, the telescopes used in the project could detect them.

The closest star to Earth – Proxima Centauri – is 24 trillion miles away and it takes light from it 4.2 years to reach our planet.