Research summary
Astronomy is the study of everything in the universe beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. To explore it effectively, today’s scientists rely on cutting-edge technologies. As Canada Research Chair in Radio Cosmology and Instrumentation, Dr. Matt Dobbs is developing some of the technologies they need.
One technology developed by Dobbs has already led to the world’s largest radio correlator (the signal-processing engine of a radio telescope) as well as the construction of CHIME, the first major research telescope built on Canadian soil in more than 30 years. Now, he and his research team are pioneering the techniques and strategies needed to use CHIME—and its successor, CHORD—to map structures in the universe from a half to a fifth of its current age. Their work will provide the largest sample of fast radio bursts (bright, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves) and enable their use in cosmology.