<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We can’t say what kind of galaxy it can be from,” said</span><a href="https://msi.mcgill.ca"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">McGill University Space Institute</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Director Victoria Kaspi. “We don’t know what kind of source they’re coming from. We can’t, you know, [even] confirm they’re coming from another galaxy.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Researchers speculate that the FRB might originate in a neutron star going supernova or a gamma-ray burst. They believe that the source of the FRB must have immense power and energy behind it, but beyond that, it’s all educated guesswork.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">CHIME comprises four, 100-meter-long collectors shaped like half pipes, or cylinders halved lengthwise. It’s Canada’s largest telescope, and one of the largest telescopes in the world dedicated to investigating our universe’s “adolescence” — the period from 8 to 10 billion years ago, during the universe’s rapid expansion. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The hope is that the more FRB that CHIME receives, the more information that researchers will be able to glean from them. To begin with, they hope to determine whether all FRB originate from the same source or area, or from unique, discreet sources. They also hope to gather some data about the vast distances through which the FRB signals travel, and what fills those apparently empty expanses.</span><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3726922/mapping-the-universe-and-understanding-dark-matter-in-the-south-okanagan/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">But there’s more than that</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Because they propagate through a large portion of the universe, you can learn about the material that’s between galaxies using these events,” said the</span><a href="https://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/?pedisable=false"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">National Research Council</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">’s Paul Scholtz. “Basically, like a little probe passing [through] the material between us and the source of it.”</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A better understanding of dark matter means a better understanding of the movements of the universe. It could lead to scientists understanding how dark matter’s occasional collisions and interactions with other particles affects movement and matter throughout the universe and here on Earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We’re going to be able to do great science in this area,”</span><a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4370531/chime-frb-outside-our-galaxy/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">said Kaspi</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“This is a valuable place to look and [other researchers] might consider how they’re going … to tackle this problem, too, and what sort of new instruments they might want to build.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the meantime, while researchers collaborate and build new tools to investigate FRB, CHIME will continue its own mission, collecting new information about the origins of the universe. </span></p>
Keep reading...
Show less