Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
CHIME under construction in July, 2015
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| Location(s) | DRAO, OK Falls, BC, Canada |
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| Coordinates | 49°19′15.6″N 119°37′26.4″W / 49.321000°N 119.624000°WCoordinates: 49°19′15.6″N 119°37′26.4″W / 49.321000°N 119.624000°W |
| Altitude | 545 m (1,788 ft) |
| Wavelength | 400–800 MHz |
| Built | Construction started 2015 |
| First light | early 2016 |
| Telescope style | Semi-cylindrical parabolic reflector |
| Diameter | 80 by 100 metres (260 ft × 330 ft) |
| Collecting area | 8,000 m2 (86,000 sq ft) |
| Mounting | Fixed-mount zenith telescope |
| Enclosure | none |
| Website | Official CHIME site |
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The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is an interferometric radio telescope under construction at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada which will consist of four 100 x 20 metre semi-cylinders (roughly the size and shape of snowboarding half-pipes) populated with 1024 radio receivers sensitive at 400–800 MHz. The telescope's low-noise amplifiers are being built with components adapted from the cellphone industry and its data will be processed using a 1000-processor high-performance GPGPU cluster. The telescope has no moving parts and observes half of the sky each day as the Earth turns. CHIME is a partnership between the University of British Columbia, McGill University, the University of Toronto and the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory.
One of the biggest puzzles in contemporary cosmology is why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. About seventy percent of the Universe today consists of so-called dark energy that counteracts gravity's attractive force and causes this acceleration. Very little is known about what dark energy is. CHIME will make precise measurements of the acceleration of the Universe to improve the knowledge of how dark energy behaves. The experiment is designed to observe the period in the Universe's history during which the standard ΛCDM model predicts that dark energy began to dominate the energy density of the Universe and when decelerated expansion transitioned to acceleration.
In addition to its main, cosmological purpose, CHIME will also be well-equipped for other astrophysical science. It will be used for discovering and monitoring pulsars and other radio transients, a specialised instrument is being developed for these science objectives. CHIME's daily survey of the sky will enable study of our own Milky Way galaxy, in radio frequencies, and is expected to improve the understanding of galactic magnetic fields.
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