China is forcibly moving more than 9,000 residents who live near the world's largest radio telescope, currently under construction.
The telescope, called the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), is a massive dish with a diameter of, you guessed it, 500 metres. When it's completed in September, China hopes it will further mankind's efforts of detecting extraterrestrial life.
The dish is located in Guizhou in southwest China, and the government plans to relocate people within a 5km radius before its completion, said Xinhua.
The people need to be moved in order to protect the telescope, which needs a "sound electromagnetic wave environment", said Li Yuecheng, secretary-general of the CPPCC Guizhou Provincial Committee.
Affected residents will get 12,000 yuan ($1,838) in subsidies from the government, and ethnic minorities facing difficulties in finding housing will get an additional 10,000 yuan ($1,532). The report did not specify how residents would apply for the additional subsidies.
Construction on the telescope started in 2011 at a cost of 1.2 billion yuan ($183 million). The next largest radio telescope is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, at 300 metres in diameter.
The FAST dish is roughly the size of 30 football fields, and will be lined with 4,600 triangular panels that will reflect and focus radio waves, allowing scientists to detect radio signals tens of billions of light years away.
