Nan Rendong was the chief of China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope. FAST is able to receive electromagnetic signals from 10 billion light years away, and with it Nan hoped "to discover the origins of the universe, the origins of celestial bodies, and the origins of life". He passed away at the age of 72 in September 2017 from lung cancer.
