Question
These phenomena were at one time speculated to be artificial because similar signals called perytons were shown to be caused by a microwave. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these phenomena whose distribution can be analyzed by plotting them on graphs of fluence versus dispersion measure. Many of them have been observed with the CHIME (“chime”) telescope.
ANSWER: fast radio bursts [or FRBs] (Perytons are named after the mythological creature from Jorge Luis Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings.)
[10m] A crude rule of thumb calculates this quantity for a fast radio burst by dividing its dispersion measure by 1,000. Surveys of this quantity, such as the one carried out by the SDSS, measure it to map the large-scale structures of galaxies.
ANSWER: redshift [accept cosmological redshift or photometric redshift; reject “Doppler redshift” or “Doppler shift” or “blueshift”]
[10e] The first fast radio burst was detected in a survey of these objects that were discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. They are neutron stars that emit radio waves at regular periods.
ANSWER: pulsars [accept pulsating radio sources]
Data
| Team | Opponent | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago A | Minnesota A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Chicago B | Iowa State A | 10 | 10 | 10 | 30 |
| Columbia B | Purdue A | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Cornell A | Imperial A | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Cornell B | Stanford A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Duke A | Michigan A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Florida A | South Carolina A | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| Florida B | Penn State A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Georgia Tech A | Illinois A | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Indiana A | Toronto A | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| MIT A | Chicago C | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| NYU A | Georgia Tech B | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Northwestern A | Claremont A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Rutgers A | Harvard A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Texas A | Ohio State A | 10 | 0 | 10 | 20 |
| UC Berkeley B | McGill A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Vanderbilt A | Houston A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Virginia A | Johns Hopkins A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| WUSTL B | Rutgers B | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |
| Yale B | WUSTL A | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10 |