The GREENBURST research team, which has been operating for the past five years,
has just received funding to extend its quest to search for transient radio sources
using the Green Bank Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. With support from
a three-year $580,000 award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team
aims to discover and study fast radio bursts (FRBs) and ultra-long period pulsars.
The GREENBURST experiment, led by WVU Department of Physics and Astronomy Professors Duncan Lorimer and Maura McLaughlin, will use observations at the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to study transient astrophysical objects within and beyond the Milky Way.
A major activity now underway is the search for FRBs in nearby galaxies. Using well-established techniques to search for single pulses and artificial intelligence to combat rising levels of terrestrial radio interference, this project will expand the capabilities of GREENBURST to allow it to sample pulses with widths between 10 nanoseconds and 10 seconds.
"Every time we look in the universe in a new way, there are surprises! I'm excited to see what new kinds of sources this project reveals,” states McLaughlin.
The award will also support two graduate students who will work and develop highly transferable skills in data analysis, machine learning, and digital signal processing.
Additionally, several focused outreach activities will benefit from this project including a K-12 outreach talk describing the science behind GREENBURST, which will be a new feature presentation in the West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team (SPOT) program. A group of 16 undergraduate student ambassadors will receive training on the presentation and science communication from SPOT, which reaches around 32 schools each year. In addition, a short planetarium feature on GREENBURST will be developed at WVU. The film is expected to reach 10,000 members of the local community each year.