A Single Telescope Has Detected Hundreds of Mysterious Radio Signals From Space
9 JUNE 2021
In just its first year of operations, a Canadian radio telescope has quadrupled the number of detections of strange cosmic signals known as extragalactic fast radio bursts.
Between 2018 and 2019, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) detected 535 new signals. The new, expanded fast radio burst (FRB) catalog will allow scientists to better analyze statistical data.
In turn, this will help us to understand where these mysterious bursts originate, and use them as a tool to understand the wider Universe.
"Before CHIME, there were less than 100 total discovered FRBs; now, after one year of observation, we've discovered hundreds more," said astrophysicist Kaitlyn Shin of MIT and the CHIME collaboration.