Chinese Telescope "FAST" Reveals Secrets of 900 Pulsars

The giant Chinese radio telescope "FAST," which is the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world, has successfully discovered over 900 pulsars since its inauguration in 2016. This discovery includes more than 120 binary pulsars, over 170 millisecond pulsars, and 80 faint and intermittent pulsars. Professor Han Jinlin from the National Astronomical Observatories of China emphasized the significance of these findings in understanding the dense remnants of dead stars in the Milky Way galaxy and their radiative properties. Monitoring pulsars is a key task for the FAST telescope, which can be used to confirm the existence of gravitational waves and black holes, and to help answer many fundamental physics questions. It is noteworthy that the FAST telescope is located in a deep karst depression in Guizhou Province, southwest China, and officially began operations in January 2020. It is believed to be the most sensitive radio telescope in the world. The team working with the telescope continuously seeks to improve its performance, with an annual observation time currently around 5,300 hours.