SARAS 3 radio telescope

Context

  • Recently, SARAS 3 radio telescope refutes recent claim of the discovery of a radio wave signal from cosmic dawn.

About SARAS 3 radio telescope

  • Utilising the indigenously invented and built SARAS 3 radio telescope, researchers from Raman Research Institute, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India refuted this claim. SARAS 3 radio telescope
  • The SARAS 3 radio telescope invented and built by the astronomers at RRI is the first telescope worldwide to reach the required sensitivity.
  • The signal claimed to have been detected by the ASU/MIT team required exotic and non-standard physics and caused astrophysicists worldwide to invent new theories, which are all now redundant.
  • This research of the Raman Research Institute restores confidence in our understanding of the evolving Universe, re-establishing the prevailing cosmological model of the cosmos.

SARAS: experiment and science

  • SARAS is a niche high-risk high-gain experimental effort of RRI initiated and led by Prof. Ravi Subrahmanyan, along with Prof. N. Udaya Shankar.
  • It was a courageous attempt to design, build and deploy in India a precision radio telescope to detect extremely faint radio wave signals from the depths of time, from our “Cosmic Dawn” when the first stars and galaxies formed in the early Universe.
  • Detecting a faint signal from such an early period of the Universe is extremely difficult. The celestial signal is exceptionally faint – buried in sky radio waves that come to us from the gas in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, which are a million times brighter.
  • Besides, this cosmic signal is in a radio wavelength band used by numerous terrestrial communications equipment and TV and FM radio stations, which makes detecting the extra-terrestrial signal extremely difficult.
  • However, RRI scientists and engineers have risen to the challenge and designed and calibrated the SARAS radio telescope to discern signals from Cosmic Dawn. It is one of the most sensitive instruments in the world in this field of research today.
  • SARAS 3 was indeed the first experiment to reach the required sensitivity and cross-verify the claim of the signal detection.
  • The SARAS 3 team at RRI is planning more observations on remote lakes in India. Such expeditions will allow the team to detect the 21-cm signal from the Cosmic Dawn and unravel this last remaining gap in the history of our Universe.

Source: PIB

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