from the taking-a-closer-look-at-things dept.
China still having trouble staffing up its mega-telescope
China has built a staggeringly large radio telescope in a remote part of the country, and, although it is the largest and most advanced instrument of its kind in the world, the country continues to have a difficult time staffing up the observatory.
Not only has the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST instrument, still failed to attract a chief scientist, according to the South China Morning Post the facility is also struggling to attract two dozen researchers to work onsite to maintain the instrument and analyze data collected there.
One problem is pay. According to the Post, astronomers interested in joining working there should speak fluent English and expect to work in the remote location on a long-term basis. (The telescope is located in southwest China's mountainous Guizhou Province.) Compensation for the job is meager, at least by Western standards—about 100,000 yuan, or $14,400 annually.
Previously: China Announces Petascale Supercomputer for FAST Radiotelescope
China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope
China Begins Operating World's Largest Radio Telescope
China Can't Find Anyone Smart Enough to Run its Whizzbang $180M 500 Meter Radio Telescope
Related: Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory Saved From Uncertain Fate
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China is planning another petaflop supercomputer, this time to support what will by next year become the world's largest radiotelescope.
The telescope itself, a 500 metre monster that's scooped into a hilltop in Guizhou, has been under construction since 2011.
This week, engineers began installing the 4,450 panels that will make up the FAST (Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope) facility, which the Middle Kingdom's Academy of Sciences reckons will be able to detect radio signals from more than ten billion light years' distance.
More importantly, its huge size will also mean FAST can pick up even fainter signals than those captured at today's biggest radiotelescope, the [300 metre] Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico.
Xinhua reports that the instrument will be supported by Skyeye-1, a petaflop facility that'll connect to FAST with 100 Gbps links.
The Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CASICT), Dawning Information Industry Co and China (Guizhou) Skyeye Group will build what's to be called the Qiannan Super Computing Center in Guizhou.
FAST's daily peak demand is predicted to exceed 200 teraflops, with first stage storage of more than 10 petabytes, CASICT researcher Zhang Peiheng told the state-run news agency.
More information at Wikipedia; arXiv.org has the 2011 abstract and full PDF.
China Builds World's Largest Radiotelescope
According to 9news, construction of the world's largest radiotelescope has been completed. Situated in a hollow in the mountains of China's Guizhou province, the structure includes a 500 m reflector, hence its name Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST). Unlike the Arecibo telescope, the shape of the reflector can be changed. The receiver was built by the CSIRO.
Submitted via IRC for crutchy
The world's largest radio telescope began searching for signals from stars and galaxies and, perhaps, extraterrestrial life Sunday in a project demonstrating China's rising ambitions in space and its pursuit of international scientific prestige.
Beijing has poured billions into such ambitious scientific projects as well as its military-backed space program, which saw the launch of China's second space station earlier this month.
Measuring 500 meters in diameter, the radio telescope is nestled in a natural basin within a stunning landscape of lush green karst formations in southern Guizhou province. It took five years and $180 million to complete and surpasses that of the 300-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a dish used in research on stars that led to a Nobel Prize.
The official Xinhua News Agency said hundreds of astronomers and enthusiasts watched the launch of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in the county of Pingtang.
Researchers quoted by state media said FAST would search for gravitational waves, detect radio emissions from stars and galaxies and listen for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
"The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe," Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state broadcaster CCTV.
Source: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-china-world-largest-radio-telescope.html
There's also a video about it on YouTube.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
There aren't many astronomy jobs that pay very well – but the Chinese authorities are offering just that for the director of scientific operation for its new Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope.
At 500m (1,640ft) across, FAST became the world's largest filled-aperture radio telescope when construction finished last year.
While the initial building is complete and nearly 10,000 people have been moved away from the instrument to cut down on polluting it with electromagnetic signals, the telescope still needs to be calibrated and fine-tuned.
[...] Unfortunately, finding a director with the necessary skills to do the job of managing and running the instrument has proven problematic. So a foreigner is now being sought to bring their experience to bear on the project.
"The post is currently open to scientists working outside China only," a human resources official at the Chinese Academy of Sciences told the South China Morning Post. "Candidates can be of any nationality, any race."
[...] It's a tough job, managing a facility that complex and handling the competing claims for time on the 'scope from scientists. The Academy of Sciences is asking for a professor with at least 20 years' experience in radio astronomy, as well as management training.
"These requirements are very high. It puts most astronomers out of the race. I may be able to count those qualified with my fingers," said Wang Tinggui, professor of astrophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China. "It is not a job for a scientist. It's for a superhero."
Arecibo Observatory, which is the second-largest radio telescope in the world, is under new management. A group led by the University of Central Florida will take over the operations of the telescope from the National Science Foundation, which was considering shutting down the observatory.
The telescope's fate had previously been uncertain. Back in 2016, the National Science Foundation announced that it was exploring different options in regard to Arecibo. There wasn't enough funding to continue supporting the telescope, so the NSF was looking at partnering with other organizations, scaling back or shutting down Arecibo entirely. That same year, the observatory was the first to capture repeating cosmic radio bursts, which have helped us understand the nature of our galaxy and the universe around it.
[...] But now, this new agreement ensures that Arecibo Observatory will remain open. It is scheduled to take effect on April 1st. UCF and its partners, Universidad Metropolitana in San Juan and Yang Enterprises, Inc. in Oviedo, also plan to expand the operations of the telescope. It's good news for the scientific community, and also for Puerto Rico.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/22/puerto-rico-arecibo-observatory-new-management-ucf/
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday November 06 2018, @09:47AM (6 children)
> and expect to work in the remote location on a long-term basis
The chief of the local soccer team did exactly the opposite. Combed for new talent kept it for 1,2 seasons and then resell.
Result, most profitable team of Serie A 2012-13 and players being motivated to do their best.
They should look for people who want to build experience there and then get in a better place.
If you really really need people to stay 20 years there to figure out how to tune the beast, OK, but build your own disco with blackjack and hookers so that the place isn't pure boredom.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:01AM (1 child)
Remote mountains sounds like paradise to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou [wikipedia.org]
Looks great. If only I could speak Chinese, knew a bit more astrophysics and didn't have a family :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:04AM
2 out of 3 of your concerns are shared by the foreign scientists they scouted for the chief position.
Boring or paradise, it seems this thingy will not be staffed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:07AM (3 children)
Why not have a skeleton crew of researchers work at the site of the telescope, and the rest remotely? They could even cycle them out, 1 month field trips.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:26AM (2 children)
Have you ever tried to operate a research facility like that? I have. It does not work.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @11:06AM (1 child)
Read the article. Whatever they are doing right now does not work for them.
Why do they need 24 researchers there for maintenance? Why not 2 or 5, with technicians called in when needed? Why do they anybody there at all for data analysis? There aren't any researchers visiting Hubble for data analysis, but it has produced thousands of papers. Is the telescope generating too much data to move off site? Upgrade the link to the outside world.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:46PM
Scientists (and even technicians working on real science projects) are not a commodity like coders currently are. Note that I don't believe coders are commodity either, but business did not learn the lesson just yet. Business will learn it at some point and in a very very hard way.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday November 06 2018, @10:41AM (1 child)
By Chinese standards it's probably a very well paid position. It's quite a bit over the average wage, even more then if it was a manufacturing job and extremely well paid compared to the minimum wage jobs. But sure if they want to have someone from abroad come in and do the job then it probably won't cut it (unless that person is paid for by it's "home" university in the west).
Still it does seem somewhat odd that they can't find anyone. Whatever happened to the giant red army recruitment pool. I'm sure they could find some astronomer or similar there that they can make an offer they can't refuse.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages [tradingeconomics.com]
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday November 06 2018, @12:06PM
No, it isn't. China pay is ~ 35% to 40% of USA pay in many technical and scientific fields. It's not like India or the shittier places in Africa. Average pay stats don't give you an accurate estimate of the pay for trained engineers,technicians, and scientists. They need to pay 2-3x what they are offering.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday November 06 2018, @12:33PM (3 children)
An old high school buddy of mine got an astronomy degree and ended up using his degree at a retail bookstore. most of his classmates had similar stories, so you might be surprised how many qualified astronomers would jump at $14K. That's also about $10K more than adjuncts working in the field get for teaching. Cool education opportunity, fascinating hobby, terrible vocation.
Admittedly they want to build an empire of dozens of researchers which means many dozens of support people which means they REALLY are trying to hire some director level manager with a MBA who once looked thru a kids telescope and has extensive experience working mostly unsupervised and alone, they are not trying to hire a 100% astronomer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @08:24PM (1 child)
You're insane, no one in their right mind would jump at $14k unless relocation is 100% paid for and they have zero student debt. Even then they wouldn't be "jumping" at the opportunity because any non-minimum wage job in the US will likely return more money over several years. Leave friends, family, and country for $14k a year? Only if they REALLY want the astronomy career experience and have zero debt.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 07 2018, @12:30PM
You're kinda making my point for me, AC. IF the supply is X times greater than the demand, then you don't need everyone to do the economically rational thing, you just need 1 in X people to do something a little extreme.
Career experience is worth so much in over populated fields that people WILL work for free in internships, so ...
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday November 07 2018, @01:03AM
Multinationals are paying ~40% of USA rates for engineering and skilled technicians in China. I didn't know hard sciences were that bad in comparison.
(Score: 5, Funny) by MrGuy on Tuesday November 06 2018, @02:26PM
So, you’re having an issue with getting human scientists to do some Aperture Science?
Have you considered some sort of AI system? I hear they love doing science...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06 2018, @06:31PM
China still has trouble staffing the world's largest telescope even after two rounds of free advertising on multiple science websites
Where's my tiny violin?