Swinburn University Student Develops Automated System for Fast Radio Waves Detection

The new invention by a student of Swinburn University will now help scientist to detect and capture fast radio waves from the space in real-time.

The brainchild behind the development of the ML-based fully automated FRB detection system is Wael Farah. After the development, he became the first person to discover FRBs in real-time. Mr Wael trained the on-site computers to detect the signs and characteristics of FRBs and now has five bursts under his belt.

Mr Wael’s research work is showcased in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The supercomputers were trained by Mr Wael at the Molonglo Radio Observatory. Once it was completed, the computers snapped the finest details seen to date. After that, it only took one second for the bursts to reach the Molonglo Radio telescope. The next thing happened is that, the researchers collected the high-resolution data from the bursts to study about their structure precisely and collect evidence about their origin.

The University of Sydney owns the Molonglo telescope.

There are many benefits of the new invention. The system can spot and store FBRs from millions of radio events such as solar winds, mobile phones, and lighting storms. On the other hand, the system is ideal to probe FBR properties that people didn’t have access to previously.

According to Mr Wael, his interest developed for FBRs when he discovers that it can potentially be used to study matter around and between galaxies.