Chapter 337
Chapter 337: Chapter 30 Space-Time Particle Chapter 337: Chapter 30 Space-Time Particle “Of course, I know what the Guizhou Sky Eye is.”
Lin Xian looked at Liu Feng helplessly:
“When I asked you to repeat yourself, it wasn’t because I didn’t hear you clearly…
it was because I wanted to make sure whether you actually know what you’re talking about.”
Sigh.
Lin Xian sighed inwardly.
The Guizhou Sky Eye, both within China and internationally, is a very well-known entity, especially for a science fiction enthusiast like Lin Xian, who would be more than familiar with it.
Just as Liu Feng had said.
It was the world’s largest astronomical radio telescope, with a total floor area exceeding 260,000 square meters.
The construction plan proposed in 1993, through to the final installation of the last reflective unit in 2016, took a total of 23 years.
Large astronomical telescopes are generally built far from cities in mountainous regions to avoid urban signal interference; with its mountainscape and an average altitude over 1,000 meters, Guizhou was indeed a uniquely advantageous location for construction.
The Guizhou Sky Eye’s design was rather unique, resembling a silver cauldron set amidst mountains.
Traditional radio telescopes are generally of a radar design, or something similar, but this cauldron, with a diameter surpassing 500 meters, clearly couldn’t be erected; hence, it was constructed as a lying-down structure.
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Around this cauldron, or the mirror surface, stood six support towers nearly hundred meters tall, each with a steel cable extending out to suspend a white “little box” in the air, positioned right above the huge reflective mirror in the “heart of the cauldron.”This little box, scientifically known as the Feed Cabin, was the core device of the Sky Eye Radio Telescope.
At the focal point of each parabolic reflector, the Feed Cabin’s purpose was to focus the signals collected by the reflector, enabling highly sensitive space observation.
During operation, the reflector had to deform according to the celestial body being observed, the parabolic shape would change accordingly, the focal point would shift, and the position of the Feed Cabin had to move as well…
It’s a very complex system.
It’s worth mentioning that.
Radio telescopes differ from optical telescopes; optical ones use the gathering of visible light to create the kind of visual images that are commonly understood.
Radio telescopes, on the other hand, converge extremely faint long-wave electromagnetic waves from the universe…
They aren’t telescopes in the traditional sense, their sensitivity and observable range far surpass that of optical telescopes, but they lack conventional imaging capabilities, instead focusing on the observation and recording of waves, frequencies, and radiation.
In recent decades, the four major discoveries in the field of astronomy—the pulsar, quasar, cosmic microwave background radiation, interstellar organic molecules…
all benefit from the contributions of radio telescopes.
Among all the radio telescopes in the world, big and small.
The Guizhou Sky Eye, also known to world astronomy enthusiasts as the China Sky Eye, this cauldron…
Without a doubt.
Is the strongest existence on Earth’s surface.
…
Lin Xian bent down, picked up the pen that he had thrown onto the floor, and placed it on the table:
“The Guizhou Sky Eye is a national treasure, and although it’s also open for tourism, it undertakes very important astronomical observation tasks most of the time, and many of those tasks even involve state secrets, leading to periods when the telescope is closed to the public.”
“But no matter what, even if this equipment had no scientific research tasks and was purely open for touristic visitation every day…
there’s no way I could buy it for you!”
“It’s not a matter of whether there’s enough money; it’s a national asset that is not for sale, not something you can buy just because you have the money.
And even if you had the money, without the technology and state support, it would be impossible to replicate a Sky Eye like this.”@@novelbin@@
“Even if we take ten thousand steps back, Liu Feng, and I wanted to spend money to rent it for a few days, I still wouldn’t be eligible.
I haven’t kept up with it in recent years, but previous reports I’ve seen said that many countries around the world are queuing up to request use of the Sky Eye…
It’s difficult enough to borrow it in the name of a country, let alone something a small company owner like me could handle.”
“However…” Liu Feng scratched his head, showing a troubled expression:
“As I just told you, if Space-Time Particles really exist, they would be very tiny and hard to detect.
Aside from the Guizhou Sky Eye, a super radio telescope of this caliber, I think there’s no other device on Earth that can capture the fluctuations and frequencies of the Space-Time Particles.”
“So, Lin Xian, I know borrowing the Guizhou Sky Eye is difficult, but it’s an essential part of our research on space-time curvature and the cosmic constant…
If we can’t find the Space-Time Particles, we won’t be able to zero calibrate the Space-Time Clock; without calibrating the Space-Time Clock, we can’t detect space-time curvature, and our entire research can’t continue.”
…
Lin Xian tapped his fingertips on the table without speaking.
He actually wanted to tell Liu Feng for a long time, to tell him that maybe the cosmic constant wasn’t as complex as he thought.
After all, Big Face Cat’s father needed only a pen and a few sheets of paper to work it out, so the world’s largest radio telescope might not be necessary for this.
But after some hesitations, Lin Xian still didn’t speak up.
Firstly, Liu Feng wasn’t Big Face Cat’s father, there was no comparability; Big Face Cat’s father was a genius who had won the Fields Medal, a true genius, one in a million.
In contrast, Liu Feng actually had no notable achievements up to this point; if anything, the most significant mark he made in human history might be the book accidentally left in Li Qiqi’s tomb, which had provided inspiration for Big Face Cat’s father.
What do you think?
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