For the past several years, a Canadian institution has been making vital contributions to an emerging field in science. But the coverage of its work in Canadian media has gone unnoticed.
CHANCE DISCOVERY
Recently, I picked up a copy of the Spring / Summer 2024 issue of the Scientific American magazine from my local library. Yes, I know that this storied publication has recently lost a lost of respect from many people by embracing the in-vogue politico-ideological theories; the latest example being the impolitic comments on a public forum by its editor in chief, Laura Helmuth, in response to the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the USA, for which she later apologized. Those controversies apart, I think the magazine still does a pretty good job of bringing scientific ideas to the lay audience.
I was a bit tired (mentally) on the day I picked up this magazine, so I decided to start by reading the shorter articles at the back. The last one (on pages 112-115) is titled ‘Mysterious cosmic detonations’. The specific term for these detonations is ‘fast radio burst’ (FRB). In a few thousandths of a second, one FRB can produce as much energy as the sun does in A MONTH. The current theory is that FRB’s happen at least 800 times a day all over the sky. Scientific American describes FRB’s as “one of the most active topics in astrophysics”. However, “much about FRB’s remains unknown”. And this is exactly where a Canadian institution has made a vital contribution over the years. This is how Scientific American described this contribution (pages 114 & 115 of the magazine; please read the last paragraph in the first image and the first paragraph of the second image):
UNKNOWN ENTITIES
With apologies for the blur in image #2, let me recap for you: In a field of science that is less than a quarter century old, Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) QUADRUPLED the number of catalogued FRB’s IN ONE YEAR. CHIME’s data also showed that (a) ‘non-repeater’ FRB’s were far more common than ‘repeaters’, and (b) that each of these had different characteristics. Here, we arrive at crucial question: why hadn’t I heard about this so far? IS it because I wasn’t paying attention to the news? Or because nowadays, we consume news mostly on social media, where it is served to you after being ‘curated’? Or is it that Canadian media did not deem it worthy of their attention?
As many of you know, I am news junkie and ‘terminally online’. However, given that my focus tends to be exclusively on Canadian socio-political issues, I considered it likely that I had missed news reports about CHIME. So I Googgled the terms “Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (chime)”. The first page of the search results contained ONLY ONE LINK of a media report (from CBC – more on that later). The second page yielded another solitary link, from the Globe & Mail – but it is from 2017, when CHIME was just about to begin operations. Some time between then and 2021, when CHIME made its vital contribution to modern science, G&M’s interest in it seems to have died – or maybe Google doesn’t display the rest of their coverage of the issue.
Coming to CBC, it turned out that they had done a series of reports on CHIME, although Google showed only one link. Fortunately, CBC articles contain links to other related articles that they have done. The earliest report by CBC on CHIME / FRB’s. one of the first ones, was on March 02, 2016, titled ‘Repeating mysterious radio bursts from deep space surprise scientists’, penned by Emily Chung. CHIME had not yet become operational by then, but important contributions to this field that was by then barely a decade old had been made by researchers and McGill Unibersity. One month prior, CBC had reported that China was building the world’s biggest radio telescope called FAST (which has been used to observe FRB’s, although the CBC report does not mention that as one of the objectives of FAST). In that same month (February 2016), Emiy Chung also wrote about Victoria Kaspi, a neutron star researcher at McGill, having won the prestigious $1 million Herzberg medal for her research about, among other things, a type of star called ‘magnetar’, which is a rare type of neutron star which, according to the Scientific American article, has a “magnetic field so strong that approaching within 1.000 kilometers of one would disrupt your body’s atomic nuclei and electrons, causing you to effectively dissolve”. These magnetars are now identified as one of the sources of FRB’s.
In January 2017, CBC carried a piece by Nicole Mortillaro, titled ‘Astronomers pinpoint location of fast radio burst from faint galaxy’. These were, again, researchers from McGill University. One year later, Nicole Mortillaro wrote again on CBC: ‘Scientists closer to unveiling source of mysterious bursts from distant objects’. Here, we see the first mention of CHIME, which had become operational just months earlier. Then in November 2020, CBC reported (yet again, via Nicole Mortillaro) ‘Astronomers discover likely source of strange radio bursts from space’. And finally, once again writing for CBC, Nicole Mortillaro wrote in October 2022 about the CHIME team winning the prestigious Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research, awarded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The award includes a $250,000 grant. In keeping with the ethos of our times, the citation says, among other things, that “The CHIME team has… created a progressive training environment for students, postdoctoral fellows and research associates. The team proudly includes members of underrepresented groups in physics.”
THE ECO-SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE
For all the criticism that CBC gets (including from yours truly), at least in this case, they have done a proper job of informing Canadians. The fact that Google search shows a link to only one report out of the 7 that CBC published makes me uneasy. Does this mean that other Canadian media have also reported on CHIME / FRB’s, but their links are not showing in Google search? Are they buried in the later pages of the search results? Maybe.
But the crucial thing here is that this excellent news about an achievement of a Canadian institution has not caused any ripple effects in the broader society. In particular, whichever minister was responsible for the department of government that CHIME falls under has been conspicuously silent about this. NONE of the reports (by CBC and G&M) carries any statement by any politcian. I am assuming that the concerned ministry is Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Since January 2021, this is headed by Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne. His predecessor was Navdeep Bains, who held that office from 2015 to 2021. CBC’s reporting on CHIME / FRB’s falls under the tenures of both these gentlemen. DID CBC / G&M not reach out to them? Had the ministers not issued public statements that could be quoted in the reports? Once again, we don’t know.
Unfortunately, much of public debate is focused around the cuture wars of our times, and actual wars happening halfway around the globe. I am as gulity of being obsessed with these as anyone else. But what we need is for something like the achievements of McGill / CHIME to percolate down to school children, some of whom may be inspired by these achievements, and carry forward the tradition of scientific & technological breakthroughs for which Canada used to be renowned. Perhaps this can be achieved only by changing, fundamentally, on the things that we focus on a a society. In essence, by changing our culture back to what it used to be. Now THAT would be a culture war worth fighting.
***
Independent voices are more important than ever in today’s Canada. I am happy to add my voice to the public discussions on current issues & policy, and grateful for all the encouraging response from my listeners & readers. I do not believe in a Paywall model, so will not make access to my content subject to a payment.
To help me bring more content to you, please consider donating a small amount via this PayPal link on my website: https://darshanmaharaja.ca/donate/
Image credit: Photo of CHIME’s telescope via Wikipedia; the image is at this link. Used without modification under Creative Commons License.
