CHIME Project

In News

Recently, Scientists have assembled the largest collection of fast radio bursts (FRBs) in the telescope’s first FRB catalogue.

About

• Researchers at the Pune-based Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) with collaboration of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Collaboration have achieved this milestone.
• A catalogue with all 535 FRBs was released at the American Astronomical Society.

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)

• It is an interferometric radio telescope located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, a national facility for astronomy operated by the National Research Council of Canada in British Columbia, Canada. 
• Parts of CHIMES
  • It is a novel radio telescope that has no moving parts. 
  • CHIME comprises four massive cylindrical radio antennas, roughly the size and shape of snowboarding half-pipes.
  • The telescope receives radio signals each day from half of the sky as the Earth rotates.
• Functions of CHIME
  • The CHIME stares, motionless, at the sky, and focuses incoming signals using a correlator — a powerful digital signal processor that can work through huge amounts of data, at a rate of about seven terabytes per second, equivalent to a few percent of the world’s Internet traffic.
  • The digitized signals collected by CHIME will be processed to form a 3-dimensional map of hydrogen density, which will be used to measure the expansion history of the universe. 
  • The experiment will measure the relic of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), spherical shells of matter over-density in which galaxies and gas are more likely to be found today. 
  • At the same time, these signals can be combed for fast, transient radio emission, making CHIME a unique telescope for discovering new “Fast Radio Bursts” and for monitoring many pulsars on a daily basis.
  • CHIME is highly sensitive and receptive hence has better chances of detecting more FRBs.

Significance of CHIME

• Game Changer: The advent of the CHIME project, a large stationary radio telescope, has been a game-changer and has nearly quadrupled the number of fast radio bursts discovered to date. 
• Excellent Detection of FRBs: The CHIME telescope’s large collecting area, wide bandwidth and enormous field-of-view make it a superb detector of FRBs. 
• Unprecedented Rate: The telescope has detected a whopping 535 new fast radio bursts in its first year of operation itself, between 2018 and 2019. 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.

Conclusion

• The CHIME is a revolutionary new radio telescope designed to answer major questions in astrophysics and cosmology. 
• With more observations, astronomers hope soon to pin down the extreme origins of these curiously bright signals.

Sources: TH