This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) has shown for the first time that it can detect the faint glow of hydrogen gas from deep in the universe's past using only its own data. The breakthrough paves the way for a faster, less expensive way to study dark energy—the mysterious force thought to be driving the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate and one of the biggest open questions in physics.
The achievement also marks a milestone for the telescope, which was built for this purpose. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal. "Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and the raw material from which stars form," said co-author Dr.
Arnab Chakraborty, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto who first proposed the finding. "Its faint radio emission acts like a cosmic tracer, revealing how matter is distributed across space." There are conflicting theories about the nature of dark energy in the astrophysics community. Using its own data, CHIME can investigate these theories independently and help prove or disprove them.
"This is a completely new technique for probing the cosmos, delivered by an instrument that was conceived, built by Canadians," said co-author Dr. Mark Halpern, a professor in the UBC department of physics and astronomy and CHIME principal investigator. "It's a bold new step in the global cosmology program and a Canadian success story." CHIME is a radio telescope near Penticton, British Columbia, hosted by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).
It maps the entire northern sky every day. It is a pan-Canadian research project built and operated by scientists at the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Toronto and the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (NRC), as well as other North American collaborators, including Arizona State University. CHIME was built to map the distribution of hydrogen gas in the early universe, allowing astronomers to calculate its expansion and investigate dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be driving the universe to expand faster over time.
Previously, CHIME had to cross-correlate its observations with galaxy survey data from other telescopes. Galaxy surveys investigate the same question using light to study galaxies in fine detail. They cost millions more dollars and focus only on the part of the universe hot and dense enough to form stars.
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