Probing the Magnetic Field of the Milky Way with CHIME

用 CHIME 探测银河系磁场

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-04128
• 负责人: Landecker, Thomas
• 金额: $ 2.19万
• 依托单位: University of Calgary
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=656532
• 关键词: Probing; Magnetic; Field; Milky; Way

CHIME, one of the largest radio telescopes in the world, is now being built in Canada by three Canadian universities, UBC, Toronto, and McGill, at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) near Penticton, British Columbia. CHIME will look back in time to an earlier epoch of our Universe, to a time when Dark Energy began to influence the expansion. By charting the distribution of matter in galaxies CHIME will trace out four billion years in the history of the Universe. A second major task for CHIME is to search for Fast Radio Bursts, mysterious flashes of radio light that last only thousandths of a second and come from very far away. They seem to be tracers of very high-energy events, perhaps explosions, far beyond our Milky Way. CHIME will carry out these tasks simultaneously, with two computer signal processors analyzing the same stream of data. This proposal adds a third scientific stream - the study of the Milky Way galaxy in which we live. CHIME will receive radio energy from the Milky Way galaxy every moment of every day. The local signals are almost a nuisance for CHIME's first two purposes, but there is no way to switch them off or to eliminate them from the data stream. The funds awarded here will be used to support graduate students, pursuing Masters degrees and Doctorates, who will analyze the Milky Way signal looking for a description of the magnetic field between the stars of the Milky Way.******The Milky Way is a galaxy, comprised of 100 billion stars, our Sun just a middle-of-the-road member of this ensemble. Thanks to radio astronomy, the space between the stars, once thought to be nearly empty, is known to be home to a tenuous but complex medium of gas, in atomic and molecular form, which has very cold regions intermingled with very hot regions. Mixed in is a dust of microscopic particles, the debris of dead stars. The whole is threaded by magnetic energy: magnetic field, just one millionth of the field that swings compass needles here on Earth, plays a significant role in the never-ending cycle of star birth and star death. Stars form from the interstellar material, and, late in their lives, return radiation and matter to it. The interstellar magnetic field, weak as it is, plays a big role in all these processes. Data from CHIME will join data from other large radio telescopes around the world in a quest to map interstellar magnetic fields and to understand their role in the "ecosystem" of the Milky Way.*****

CHAME是世界上最大的射电望远镜之一，目前正由加拿大的三所大学--UBC、多伦多和麦吉尔--在不列颠哥伦比亚省彭蒂顿附近的道明无线电天体物理天文台(DRAO)建造。CHAME将在时间上追溯到我们宇宙的早期时代，到黑暗能量开始影响扩张的时候。通过绘制星系中物质的分布图，CHIME将追溯出宇宙历史上40亿年的历史。CHINE的第二个主要任务是搜索快速射电爆发，这是一种神秘的射电闪光，持续时间仅为千分之一秒，来自非常遥远的地方。它们似乎是非常高能量事件的踪迹，可能是爆炸，远远超出了我们的银河系。CHINE将同时执行这些任务，由两个计算机信号处理器分析相同的数据流。这项提议增加了第三个科学流派--对我们所居住的银河系的研究。CHAME每时每刻都会接收来自银河系的无线电能量。对于CHINE的前两个目的来说，本地信号几乎是一个麻烦，但没有办法将它们关闭或从数据流中删除。这里授予的资金将用于支持攻读硕士和博士学位的研究生，他们将分析银河系信号，寻找银河系恒星之间磁场的描述。*银河系是一个由1000亿颗恒星组成的星系，我们的太阳只是这个群体中的中间成员。多亏了射电天文学，曾经被认为几乎是空的恒星之间的空间，被认为是一种稀薄但复杂的气体介质的所在地，这种气体以原子和分子的形式存在，其中有非常冷的区域，也有非常热的区域。混合在一起的是微小颗粒的尘埃，也就是死亡恒星的碎片。整个宇宙由磁能贯穿：磁场只是地球上摆动指南针的磁场的百万分之一，在恒星诞生和死亡的永无止境的循环中扮演着重要的角色。恒星由星际物质形成，在它们生命的后期，将辐射和物质返回到星际物质中。星际磁场虽然很弱，但在所有这些过程中扮演着重要的角色。来自CHINE的数据将加入世界各地其他大型射电望远镜的数据，以绘制星际磁场图，并了解它们在银河系“生态系统”中的作用。