CHIME and the Billion-Year-Old Radio Signal

Now, this is DX — radio signals traveling a billion light years through space — detected by radioastronomers in Canada, a branch of science that has its roots in amateur radio. Contributing Editor At-Large Martin Butera brings us the details.

MARTIN BUTERA

The international scientific community announced last summer that a mysterious radio burst with a pattern similar to a heartbeat had been detected in space. The signal was detected by the innovative Canadian radio telescope called CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) (Photo A). Scientists and astronomers estimate that the signal came from a galaxy about a billion light-years away, but the exact source and nature of this signal are unknown. To begin explaining this phenomenon, let’s first quickly define what radio bursts are. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense millisecond bursts of radio waves, which are of as yet unknown origins. The first FRB was discovered in 2007 and since then, hundreds of these fast cosmic flashes from the universe have been detected. This new signal, discovered in July…

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CQ Amateur Radio (Digital) - 1 Issue, January 2023

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