A team of astronauts and astronauts based at 21 research institutes worldwide will receive the Cleveland Newcomb 2020 Award, presented by the American Society for the Advancement of Science, for a discovery that developed our understanding of clear waves of radio waves from distant galleries.
Every year since 1923, the Newcomb Cleveland Prize has been awarded to the most successful research paper published in the journal Science. In this year’s winning paper, the authors described how they were the first to identify the origin of a non-repetitive rapid radio (FRB) explosion. Although they only last a few thousand miles, FRBs are some of the brightest radio sources in the air.
“Rapid radio explosions are very short-lived extragalactic events – that is, they come from a long, distant galaxy – and identifying the exact source of one’s signals is like look for the proverbial needle in a haystack, “said Holden Thorp, editor. -in-head of Science and chair of the Newcomb Cleveland Prize Selection Committee. “The methods outlined in this study will allow other teams to discover the origins of more FRBn astronomy and, in turn, the potentially unprofitable nature of their sources.”
FRBn astronauts were discovered in 2007. Although some repeat, most occur only once, last a few thousand miles, and their large nature makes them well. difficult to study. For more than a decade, researchers could not trace a single FRB back to the original.
In an effort to find a non-repetitive FRB and locate its source, Keith Bannister, a research engineer at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, led an inter- national. Bannister’s team included scientists from Australia, Chile, India, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Using the CSIRO Australian Square Square Pathfinder Array Telescope, a series of 36 radio vessels, each 12 meters in diameter, the researchers continuously monitored large parts of the sky, awaiting FRB. To avoid collecting unmanageable amounts of data, they designed a processing system to automatically detect FRBs and save three seconds of data around the events.
The FRB system was successful on September 24, 2018. The research team then used a supercomputer to bring together the data saved from each dish, allowing them to determine which side the explosion came from. This marked the position of origin as a galaxy about 3.6 billion light years away and similar in size to our own Milky Way. The square resolution was even detailed enough to determine the position of the FRB inside the galaxy.
“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this exact universe, we would be able to tell not only what city the explosion came from, but what the postcode was. – and even what city, “Bannister said in a June 2019 CSIRO Release announcing the discovery.
Determining the whereabouts of non-recurring FRBs is an important step towards determining what is causing the explosions. Furthermore, because FRBs are altered by the matter they pass through on their way to Earth, locating the explosions has already helped researchers to understanding the low-density gas in an interstellar space, which affects the formation and evolution of a galaxy.
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The Newcomb Cleveland Award, AAAS ’oldest award, recognizes the author or authors of an outstanding paper published in the Research Articles or Science Reports sections. In order to select the winning study, the selection committee will seek peer reviews as well as final papers and judge them on impact in their field and wider, interdisciplinary meaning. Papers published between June 2019 and May 2020 deserved this year’s award.
The authors of the winning study, “One local fast radio broke into a giant galaxy at a cosmological speed,” published in the August 9, 2019, issue of Science, will receive the award in a prestigious ceremony on February 10, during the 187th AAAS AGM. AAAS will begin accepting applications for the 2021 award on 15 April. Further information on eligibility requirements can be found here.
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