The first trial of an Australian-developed technology has detected mysterious objects by sifting through signals from space like sand on a beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Astronomers and engineers at CSIRO, Australia\u2019s national science agency, developed the specialised system, CRACO, for their ASKAP radio telescope to rapidly detect mysterious fast radio bursts and other space phenomena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new technology has now been put to the test by researchers led by the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR) in Western Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Results published today in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia<\/em> present the discovery of two fast radio bursts and two sporadically-emitting neutron stars, and improved location data of four pulsars, enabled by the new technology. They have since gone on to find more than twenty fast radio bursts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Andy Wang from ICRAR, who led the research group and tested CRACO, said the team had found more astronomical objects than expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were focused on finding fast radio bursts, a mysterious phenomenon that has opened up a new field of research in astronomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCRACO is enabling us to find these bursts better than ever before. We have been searching for bursts 100 times per second and in the future we expect this will increase to 1,000 times per second,\u201d Dr Wang said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CSIRO astronomer and engineer Dr Keith Bannister who, along with his team, developed the instrument, says the scale of observation enabled by the new technology is enormous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCRACO taps into ASKAP\u2019s \u2018live\u2019 view of the sky in search of fast radio bursts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo do this, it scans through huge volumes of data \u2013 processing 100 billion pixels per second \u2013 to detect and identify the location of bursts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s the equivalent of sifting through a whole beach of sand to look for a single five-cent coin every minute,\u201d Dr Bannister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CRACO is made up of a cluster of computers and accelerators connected to the ASKAP radio telescope at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory on Wajarri Yamaji Country. Development of this technology reinforces Australia\u2019s international reputation as a leader in radio astronomy engineering and research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOnce at full capacity, CRACO will be a game changer for international astronomy,\u201d Dr Wang said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CRACO has been engineered to sift through the trillions of pixels received by the telescope to find anomalies, alerting researchers the moment it spots something out of the ordinary, allowing them to quickly follow up to obtain more data and complete their own analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Wang and his team increasingly expanded CRACO\u2019s research targets to find more exotic sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re also detecting long-period transients, which remain mysterious objects within our galaxy. Both fast radio bursts and these transients were first discovered in Australia, so it is great that we\u2019re continuing the path of discovery with this impressive technology,\u201d Dr Wang said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CRACO will soon be made available to astronomers all over the world as part of CSIRO\u2019s Australia Telescope National Facility, a suite of national research infrastructure which includes Murriyang, CSIRO\u2019s Parkes radio telescope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The CRACO system was developed through collaboration between CSIRO and Australian and international researchers and was partially funded through an Australian Research Council grant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n