CHIME Telescope Detects Fast Radio Bursts in Space--How Does it Work?

CHIME Telescope has recently identified a series of fast radio bursts (FRBs) in space through the help of astronomers and notable researchers. Experts have been wondering where the light flashes have come from since they only lasted for a few milliseconds. The case was not new for the scientists since it was first spotted in 2007, and in 2017 the crew discovered that nearly 140 of them have occurred across the universe.

CHIME Radio Telescope Has Detected Occurrence of Fast Radio Bursts

According to an updated report of CNN on Wednesday, June 9, the Canadian telescope has done all the job including the discovery of another batch of the space bursts. MIT's assistant professor of Physics, Kiyoshi Masui said that there is a precise direction that the CHIME telescope should be pointed out to identify the bursts at an appropriate schedule.

Masui added that the majority of radio telescopes could not entirely witness a very tiny size of FRBs in the sky. In fact, only a few of them could be completely seen under specialized equipment.

However, with the arrival of the CHIME telescope situated in British Columbia's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Canada, the operations have continued. Since 2018, the facility has been receiving more radio signals in the first year of its activity.

The CHIME which is also known as the Candian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment has been utilized by scientists for its record of numerous fast radio bursts specifically in 2018 and 2019. In the said years, there are already 535 FRBs detected.

During the 238th American Astronomical Society Meeting on Wednesday, June 9, the researchers laid out some reports about the CHIME telescope. Moreover, they also tackled more about the characteristics of fast radio bursts, as well as their locations.

The scientists' job in looking for the burst does not stop after a single burst. When the FRBs have repeated, they could now have a better grasp of the origin of the phenomena. It was reported that 61 of the fast radio bursts have been rerun from 18 sources.

The Functions of the CHIME Telescope

In radio astronomy, this telescope consists of four giant radio antennas which resemble the snowboarding pipes cut in half. In the process of signal reception, these components are the ones that interpret the radio signals.

Furthermore, the radio telescope has also a digital signaling processor called the correlator. The approaching radio signal will be captured by it. Compared to a standard hard drive, CHIME could also do the same thing by storing large amounts of information that could reach up to 7 terabits per second.

The Canadian telescope is a better alternative to its traditional counterpart when it comes to identifying FRBs accurately. The scientists said that there are nearly 800 occurrences of fast radio bursts in a single day.

What's puzzling the researchers is the "exact" behavior of these events. The fast radio bursts that CHIME detects could reach distances from one galaxy to another.

"These large structures make up the filaments of the cosmic web," "With the FRB catalog, we have detected this correlation between FRBs and large-scale structure. This is really, really exciting and ushers in a new era of (fast radio burst) cosmology." McGill University Ph.D. student in Physics, Alex Josephy said.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry