CHIME Telescope
Why in News?
An international team of scientists, including researchers from India's Raman Research Institute (RRI) in Bengaluru, successfully achieved the first standalone detection of the faint radio glow of neutral hydrogen gas from deep cosmic history.
Overview & Location
- Full Name: Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment.
- Location: It is situated at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory operated by the National Research Council of Canada in British Columbia, Canada.
- Inauguration: The telescope was built and began operations in 2017.
Unique Design and Components
- No Moving Parts: Unlike traditional dish telescopes that rotate to scan the sky, CHIME is entirely stationary. It scans half of the sky every single day purely as the Earth rotates.
- Structure: It consists of four massive parabolic cylindrical antennas, roughly the size and shape of snowboarding half-pipes.
- Digital Steering: It relies on a superpowered digital signal processor called a correlator. It processes data at an astonishing 7 terabits per second (equivalent to a few percent of global internet traffic), allowing the telescope to digitally reconstruct and look in thousands of directions at the same time.
Core Scientific Objectives
- Mapping Hydrogen: CHIME operates in the 400 to 800 MHz radio frequency range, specifically optimized to pick up the 21-cm wavelength line emitted by neutral atomic hydrogen—the most abundant element in the cosmos.
- Measuring Cosmic Expansion: By mapping how hydrogen is distributed and clustered across deep time, scientists can trace the history of the universe's expansion and map galaxy evolution.
- Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs): CHIME is an exceptional instrument for detecting Fast Radio Bursts, which are intense, millisecond-long flashes of radio energy originating from distant galaxies. It has catalogued hundreds of these elusive events.
- Pulsar Science: Its massive field of view and broad bandwidth enable it to monitor and time up to 10 pulsars simultaneously, 24 hours a day. This data assists in gravitational wave experiments by filtering interstellar noise.
