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: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=709975
• 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.

CHIME 是世界上最大的射电望远镜之一，目前由三所加拿大大学（UBC、多伦多和麦吉尔）在加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省彭蒂克顿附近的多米尼恩射电天体物理观测站 (DRAO) 建造。 CHIME 将回顾我们宇宙的早期时代，暗能量开始影响膨胀的时代。通过绘制星系中物质的分布图，CHIME 将追溯宇宙 40 亿年的历史。 CHIME 的第二个主要任务是寻找快速射电暴，这是一种神秘的射电光闪光，持续时间只有千分之一秒，而且来自很远的地方。它们似乎是远远超出我们银河系的高能事件的示踪物，也许是爆炸。 CHIME 将同时执行这些任务，并由两个计算机信号处理器分析相同的数据流。该提案增加了第三个科学领域——对我们居住的银河系的研究。 CHIME每天每时每刻都会接收来自银河系的无线电能量。对于 CHIME 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消除它们。这里授予的资金将用于支持攻读硕士学位和博士学位的研究生，他们将分析银河系信号，寻找对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星系团的中间成员。得益于射电天文学，曾经被认为几乎是空的恒星之间的空间，现在被认为是一种稀薄但复杂的原子和分子形式的气体介质的所在地，其中有非常冷的区域和非常热的区域混合在一起。其中混有微小颗粒的尘埃，即死亡恒星的碎片。整个系统由磁能贯穿：磁场只是地球上罗盘针摆动磁场的百万分之一，但它在恒星诞生和恒星死亡的永无休止的循环中发挥着重要作用。恒星由星际物质形成，并在其生命的后期将辐射和物质返回给恒星。星际磁场虽然很弱，但在所有这些过程中发挥着重要作用。 CHIME 的数据将与世界各地其他大型射电望远镜的数据结合起来，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。