China Displaces 9000 To Build World's Largest Alien-Seeking Telescope

[PatrickJS]

China Displaces 9000 To Build World's Largest Alien-Seeking Telescope

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As China constructs the world's largest-ever radio telescope, the government is relocating 9000 villagers to make room for the device which will primarily look for extraterrestrial signals.

While China's new telescope is hunting extraterrestrial life, some people back on Earth are going to be wondering just where they are to live.

As the Chinese government continues construction of FAST, short for "500-meter aperture spherical telescope", they've announced the mass relocation of about 9,000 villagers in the facility's vicinity. Xinhua says this is necessary to create a sound electromagnetic environment for the telescope to operate in.

Guizhou, the site of FAST, is one of China's poorest provinces; the residences being moved are to be given about $1,800 in compensation. The telescope costs $182 million.

When FAST is complete and operational in September of 2016, it will be the largest-ever radio telescope on Earth. Among its duties will be scanning the skies for information on the many cosmic phenomena out there - not to mention, listening closely for any sentient whispers from out in the black.

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Recently, Cixin Liu won a Hugo award for his novel, The Three Body Problem [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem], about Chinese scientists making first contact with an alien race.

For years, SETI has had to rely on borrowing time from other telescopes such as the Arecibo dish, or scanning second-hand data from other projects. "With a larger signal receiving area and more flexibility, FAST will be able to scan two times more sky area than Arecibo, with three to five times higher sensitivity," says Li Di, a chief scientists with China's National Astronomical Observatories.

"Ultimately," he went on, "exploring the unknown is the nature of mankind."

Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/world/asia/china-fast-telescope-guizhou-relocation.html?_r=0]







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[The Rogue Wolf]

"Evil Communist China", sure, sure, that's what a lot of people will think. And to be fair it's a pretty dick move. But the US did something quite similar back in the 50's and 60's- it seized up a fair bit of land under "eminent domain" for the Interstate highway system. It paid the owners of that land, sure- not doing so would have been against the Constitution, which demands "just compensation"- but it gave them no choice in taking the deal. In fact, the Supreme Court (in a 5-4 vote; Kelo vs. New London, 2005) decided that private landowners were not protected from eminent-domain seizures by the Constitution.

 

[Yan007]

I'd like to point out that $1,800 is more than 5 years salary for a farmer. Not a bad deal.

Also, farmers do not own the land in China, they are lent the land by the government.

 

[Zontar]

I'd like to point out that $1,800 is more than 5 years salary for a farmer. Not a bad deal.

Also, farmers do not own the land in China, they are lent the land by the government.

To be perfectly frank, is someone was selling a farm out where I live and they got offered the equivalent of 5 years salary they'd laugh so hard there'd be risk of a medical bill being sent to the one making that offer.

Plus, the CCP officially owning the land isn't a positive, they've never managed to find a way to manage it well, and they didn't exactly make it publicly owned land through compensation given it was done by the point of a gun, force relocations and mass murder on a scale not seen at any other point in human history.

 

[Zontar]

Snip

To be fair, the Interstates where desperately needed given the mass adaptation of cars and sudden suburbanization of the country. With how infrastructure some parts of the country was suddenly changing, the Interstates where needed to keep things balanced. Plus there's the economic benefits that where a part of the post-war boom that couldn't have been possible without them.

But that's all beside the point when one remembers that while it was all force upon people, at least they got the actual value of the property instead of a fraction of it, which can't be said for the CCP doing the same. Any compensation at all is a lucky brake given how most times they don't give a penny, and on occasion don't even bother pretending that compensation will ever come at all. I highly doubt more then 10% of the money they claim they're going to give out will find its way into the hands of the villagers being displaced. Not with the systemic corruption that is so engraved into the CCP that the only way to remove it would be to literally disband the party and start a new government structure.

 

[Space Jawa]

"Evil Communist China", sure, sure, that's what a lot of people will think. And to be fair it's a pretty dick move. But the US did something quite similar back in the 50's and 60's- it seized up a fair bit of land under "eminent domain" for the Interstate highway system. It paid the owners of that land, sure- not doing so would have been against the Constitution, which demands "just compensation"- but it gave them no choice in taking the deal. In fact, the Supreme Court (in a 5-4 vote; Kelo vs. New London, 2005) decided that private landowners were not protected from eminent-domain seizures by the Constitution.

The Interstate Highway system was the intended purpose of US eminent domain - to allow the government to build essential public works that provide a great, unquestioned benefit to the public good. This is something that Interstate Highway system unquestionably provides - not only did it provide vast national economic benefits by making cross-country travel far easier, it also provided a valuable benefit to national defense by making it far easier to relocate military resources as needed.

Kelo vs New London, on the other hand, is an absolutely BS mistake of a ruling by 'expanding' the use of Eminent Domain to allow government to take property from one private land owner and give it to another private land owner. It was a ruling that should not have happened, as was widely recognized by the many states that passed laws prohibiting the use of Eminent Domain to transfer land from one private owner to another, and a petition that suggested that one of the Supreme Court Justices who ruled in the majority should have his home seized by Eminent Domain and given to someone else to build something else on.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Do you think they're compensating for something?

 

[Li Mu]

I'd like to point out that $1,800 is more than 5 years salary for a farmer. Not a bad deal.

Also, farmers do not own the land in China, they are lent the land by the government.

To be perfectly frank, is someone was selling a farm out where I live and they got offered the equivalent of 5 years salary they'd laugh so hard there'd be risk of a medical bill being sent to the one making that offer.

Chinese farmers are not like Western farmers. In the west (in Europe at least) farmer can earn a good wage. In China, if you are a farmer, you are pretty much the bottom of the social ladder. You have a very hard and very poor life. So getting 5 years of salary is actually a fantastic deal for them.

Plus, your mention of mass murder is curious. Granted, in the past they have done that. But when, since Hu Jintao's time, have they murdered people to get them to move?
Lumping it all in together is like giving a black mark to the current US administration for the 1898 US occupation of the Philipines. You're being rather disingeuous.

 

[Yan007]

LiMu is right. Being a farmer is NOT a good thing in China, and is sometimes even worse than being a beggar or a garbage diver.

I lived in China for over 4 years and most people have only contempt for farmers because they are poor and nobody wants to be them.

 

[GundamSentinel]

All very sad for the locals who get screwed over by the government (nothing new and certainly not exclusive to China), but that thing does look pretty damn cool.

Don't care if people think I'm a bad person for saying so.

 

[Scarim Coral]

So were the villagers were ok with this? Interesting how the news doesn't report their perspective (ok I didn't look that hard, just the two links in the article).

 

[FalloutJack]

So tell me, when do they plan to launch Goldeneye?

 

[Thaluikhain]

"Evil Communist China", sure, sure, that's what a lot of people will think. And to be fair it's a pretty dick move. But the US did something quite similar back in the 50's and 60's- it seized up a fair bit of land under "eminent domain" for the Interstate highway system. It paid the owners of that land, sure- not doing so would have been against the Constitution, which demands "just compensation"- but it gave them no choice in taking the deal. In fact, the Supreme Court (in a 5-4 vote; Kelo vs. New London, 2005) decided that private landowners were not protected from eminent-domain seizures by the Constitution.

Driving away poor people to develop something, in various forms, is hardly uncommon, yeah.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

Didn't Sean Bean die there once?
Also, didn't I once blow that up in Just Cause 2?

I have nothing useful to add.

 

[Tiamat666]

Ehh, this is super sweet <_<. If they do discover alien life...well it's like being the first person to make contact with another continent of Civs in the Civilization Games. Huge diplomatic, technological, and economic leverage <_<.

...We need to build a bigger one before they do!

On the other hand, not sure which civilization I'd prefer to make first contact... China and the US don't seem that different to me. China has a one party system, the US a two party system. Both display some police state characteristics where citizens are under constant observation and scrutiny. China has less freedom of the press and expression, but the US has more "fascism" (extreme patriotism and militarism) and xenophobic hate mongering. In China you have little control over who will rule the country, but in the US it is out of control who might rule the country, if someone like Trump has a realistic chance.

Personally, I think Sweden should win. Or the Netherlands. They are nice., open and easy going. And you know what they say, first impressions last.

 

[Space Jawa]

On the other hand, not sure which civilization I'd prefer to make first contact... China and the US don't seem that different to me. China has a one party system, the US a two party system. Both display some police state characteristics where citizens are under constant observation and scrutiny. China has less freedom of the press and expression, but the US has more "fascism" (extreme patriotism and militarism) and xenophobic hate mongering. In China you have little control over who will rule the country, but in the US it is out of control who might rule the country, if someone like Trump has a realistic chance.

If this is your attempt to make the US out to be little better than China, I'm going to assume you're trying to tell a joke here.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

So tell me, when do they plan to launch Goldeneye?

damn beat me to it, that *really* looks like a fucking scene from that movie, I was half expecting the article to be satire at the end.

 

[Paragon Fury]

So this map is happening IRL now....

 

[Tiamat666]

If this is your attempt to make the US out to be little better than China, I'm going to assume you're trying to tell a joke here.

Not sure what to tell you. If we are talking along the lines of
-civil liberties violated
-number of people tortured
-police brutality
-state surveillance
-capital punishment
-coups d'etat instigated
-wars started and civilians killed

The US and China feature prominently in the first five points and the US leads in the last two by a good margin.

Sweden and the Netherlands on the other hand, have pretty clean records. Like most of Europe.