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CHIME telescope

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Categories
    Science & Technology
  • Published
    15th Jun, 2021

Context

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).

  • It was achieved with the collaboration of Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME).

About fast radio bursts (FRBs)

  • The first FRB was spotted in 2007.
  • fast radio burst(FRB) is a transient radio pulse of electromagnetic spectrum.
  • It blazes out from a fraction of a millisecond to a few milliseconds.
  • It is caused by some high-energy astrophysical process not yet understood.
  • Most FRBs are extragalactic.
  • The first Milky Way FRB was detected by the CHIME radio telescope in April 2020.

About CHIME

  • Stationary: It is a novel radio telescope that has no moving parts.
    • It is located in British Columbia, Canada.
  • First exploration: The telescope has detected more than 500 new fast radio bursts in its first year of operation itself, between 2018 and 2019.
  • Tasks: It was originally conceived to map the most abundant element in the universe, that is Hydrogen.
    • CHIME has also discovered new "Fast Radio Bursts" and for monitoring many pulsars on a daily basis.
  • Working: This telescope is optimized to have a high "mapping speed", which requires a large instantaneous field of view (~200 square degrees) and broad frequency coverage (400-800 MHz).
    • 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.

Verifying, please be patient.