China completes construction of world's largest radio telescope

China has completed construction of the world's biggest telescope allowing the country to start exploring the space for extraterrestrial life by September this year.

The 500 metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) which is the size of 30 football fields, will now undergo debugging and performing trials , Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope, told the official Xinhua News Agency.

The field for the telescope has been hewn out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou. The telescope, which has taken about five years to build, is expected to begin operations in September

The largest radio telescope in Europe is 100 metres, a fifth of the size of FAST. Because it's so large, will be able to detect weaker alien signals than others.

''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,' Zheng said, according to the report.

The 1.2-billion yuan ($180 million/£135 million) radio telescope would be a global leader for the next one to two decades, Zheng added.

Balloons were released to celebrate the complete installation on the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) ) in Pingtang County

Radio telescopes collect radio waves from space. The giant dish reflects the waves and focuses them onto antennae. Because it is so large it will be used to detect the weakest signals. The wider the telescope, the more radio waves it will collect.