It's challenging to capture a fast radio burst or FRB. To capture an FRB, a radio telescope has to be pointed in just the right direction. FRBs are bright
CHIME telescope yields unprecedented results
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Updated:
June 10, 2021 19:50 IST
Scientific collaboration detects more than 500 mysterious fast radio bursts in its first year of operation
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Scientific collaboration detects more than 500 mysterious fast radio bursts in its first year of operation Scientists with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Collaboration, who include researchers at the Pune-based Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), have assembled the largest collection of fast radio bursts (FRBs) in the telescope’s first FRB catalogue.
While catching sight of an FRB is considered a rare thing in the field of radio astronomy, prior to the CHIME project, radio astronomers had only caught sight of around 140 bursts in their scopes since the first FRB was spotted in 2007.
In the decade following their discovery in 2007, only 140 FRBs had been seen. Now, thanks to the launch of a large stationary telescope in the interior of British Columbia in 2018, the number of new FRBs detected has almost quadrupled for a total of 535. A McGill-led inter-university collaboration, has now put together the first CHIME/FRB catalogue.
More than 500 mysterious fast radio bursts have been detected by the CHIME radio telescope in its first year of operation, astronomers have revealed.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are radio emissions that appear temporarily and randomly from space, ranging from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds.
CHIME has nearly quadrupled the number of fast radio bursts discovered to date, according to the CHIME Collaboration, which includes researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The telescope detected 535 new fast radio bursts during its first year of operation, from July 2018 to July 2019.
CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment), situated in British Columbia, Canada, has four 328-foot-long U-shaped cylinders, allowing it to detect signals from when the universe was between six and 11 billion years old.