SARAS 3 Radio Telescope

SARAS 3 Radio Telescope- Relevance for UPSC Exam

• GS Paper 3: Science and Technology- Developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

SARAS 3 Radio Telescope- Context

• Recently, Indian researchers at SARAS 3 Radio Telescope have conclusively refuted a recent claim of the discovery of a radio wave signal from cosmic dawn.
  • Cosmic Down is the time in the infancy of our Universe when the first stars and galaxies came into existence.

What was the Discovery of Radio Wave Signal from Cosmic Dawn?

• Background of the Discovery: In 2018 a team of researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) and MIT in the US detected a signal from stars emerging in the early universe using data from the EDGES radio telescope.
  • The study published in the journal Nature created much excitement in the astronomy community around the world.
• About Discovery: ASU/MIT team had claimed the discovery of a radio wave signaling the birth of the First Stars, which was also hailed by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb as worthy of two Nobel prizes.
  • However, the world awaited confirmation from independent researchers.
• Refuting the Discovering: 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.

Land Handed Over for the First LIGO Project in India

Key Points about SARAS 3 Radio Telescope

• About: 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.
• Objective: SARAS aims 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.
• The signal from Cosmic Dawn is expected to arrive on Earth stretched in wavelength to meters and lowered in frequency by the expansion of the Universe to lie in the radio frequency band 50-200 MHz.

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