China to install world's highest altitude telescopes near Indian border

New Delhi: China is coming up with world's highest gravitational wave telescopes and planning to set them close to Line of Control with India.

These high altitude telescopes would be set up in Tibet with a budget of USD 18.8 million to detect faintest echoes resonating from universe which may reveal more about the Big Bang theory.

Construction has started for the first telescope, code-named Ngari No 1, 30 km south of Shiquanhe Town in Ngari Prefecture, said Yao Yongqiang chief researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Parts of Nagri is last Tibetan prefecture at China's border with India.

The telescope, located 5,250 meters above sea level, will detect and gather precise data on primordial gravitational waves in the Northern Hemisphere.

It is expected to be operational by 2021, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Yao said the second phase involves a series of telescopes, code-named Ngari No 2, to be located about 6,000 meters above sea level.

He did not give a time frame for construction of Ngari No 2. The budget for the two-phase Ngari gravitational wave observatory is an estimated 130 million yuan (USD 18.8 million).

The project was initiated by the Institute of High Energy Physics, National Astronomical Observatories, and Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, among others, the report said.

(With PTI inputs)