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.
- A 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.
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