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Fast Radio Bursts-Signals

from Across the Universe

This artist’s impression (not to scale) illustrates the path of the fast radio burst FRB 20220610A, from the distant galaxy where it originated all the way to Earth, in one of the Milky Way’s spiral arms. The source galaxy of FRB 20220610A, pinned down thanks to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), appears to be located within a small group of interacting galaxies. It’s so far away its light took eight billion years to reach us, making FRB 20220610A the most distant fast radio burst found to date.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright flashes of radio waves that last only a few milliseconds and are visible across the universe. Although approximately 10,000 of these occur every day, they were only discovered by accident in 2007. Their origins remain largely unknown, making FRBs one of the hottest topics in radio astronomy. In this talk, Dr. McKee will describe the discovery of FRBs, what we know about them, and what the next few years of radio astronomy holds for this exciting new field of astronomy.

Union College headshots
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
James McKee, Union College, Physics & Astronomy

Dr. McKee studied physics at the University of Hull, and obtained a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Manchester while working at Jodrell Bank Observatory. Dr. McKee has held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, where he was also the on-site pulsar astronomer at the Effelsberg radio telescope, and at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto where he worked on the CHIME telescope. He is currently an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Union College in NY, where he leads research into pulsars and fast radio bursts.

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NASA’s Cold Atom Lab:

Quantum Science

and Technology Maturation

on the International Space Station

NASA’s Cold Atom Lab (CAL) launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2018,
and has been operating since that time as the world’s first and only multi-user facility for the study of ultra-cold quantum gases in space. The unique microgravity environment of the ISS is utilized with CAL by a national group of principal investigators to achieve sub-nanokelvin temperature gases, to study and utilize their quantum properties in an environment free from the perturbing force of gravity, and to observe and interact with these gases in the essentially limitless freefall of Earth’s orbit. In addition to the toolbox of capabilities originally built into CAL, an upgrade in 2020 enabled the study of atom interferometry in orbit, and a 2021 upgrade and repair facilitated investigations of the interactions between mixtures of 87Rb, 39K, and 41K and a demonstration of dual-species (87Rb – 41K or 87Rb – 39K) atom interferometry. This talk will review the up-to-date quantum gas research explored with CAL and the technical accomplishments to operate, maintain, and upgrade CAL during its tenure in the microgravity environment of the ISS. The research of CAL has broad applications in fundamental physics and precision sensing to open the door for future quantum-enabled mission opportunities.

This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

2019 Tech Highlights Report
Requesters: Micaela Velasco, Elina Solis
Photographer: R. Lannom
Date: 13-MAY-2019
Photolab order: 070915/171297

Dr. Jason Williams specializes in developing light pulse atom interferometers and optical atomic clocks, and their applications to both fundamental and applied physics in space. He currently serves as Project Scientist and a Principal Investigator for NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, a multi-user facility operating on the ISS dedicated to the study of quantum gases in space. Dr. Williams received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University, studying ultracold Fermi gases, and held a NIST NRC Postdoctoral RA in Professor Jun Ye’s lab at JILA and the University of Colorado developing high-precision optical lattice clocks.

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