Scientists to unveil 12 billion-year-old signal from universe’s ‘Dark Age’: Reports

Scientists around the globe have been keenly trying to find the origin of the universe, how it was formed, the birth of new stars, and more. In this quest to unfold the mysteries of the universe, a team of scientists led by the University of Washington, US, have recently started a journey in closing in on a signal from the "dark age" of the universe, a signal that has been travelling through space for some 12 billion years.

Scientists to track the signals from 'Dark Age'

After the Big Bang, there is a period before the first stars were born when the universe was much darker. Scientists call it a Dark Age where there was no light or light signal to track. The Dark Age is between the time of the Big Bang and the formation of the ancient stars. Miguel Morales, Professor at the University of Washington, revealed in a statement that they think the properties of the universe during this era had a major effect on the formation of the first stars and set in motion the structural features of the universe we observe today. He also mentioned that the way matter was distributed in the universe during that era had an essential role in shaping the behaviour of galaxies and galactic clusters and their distribution around space.

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How did the Dark Age came into existence?

The scientists believe that before the universe entered the Dark Age, space was incredibly hot and dense. It was a time when space was filled with regular interactions between photons and electrons, giving the universe an opaque look. However, in less than a million years after the Big Bang, these interactions became rare and with that the universe increasingly became dark, hence it entered into the Dark Age which lasted for hundreds of millions of years.

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What did the Dark Age consist of?

In the darkness of the vast universe, neutral hydrogen atoms that did not have a charge bloomed everywhere in it. According to Professor Morales, in the Dark Age, there was no light-based signal that can be studied to learn about it. As there was no visible light, Morales hopes that there is a specific signal which comes from all that neutral hydrogen. This signal has never been measured, however, it is still present in the universe. But, it is difficult to detect as in the 13 billion years since that signal was emitted, our universe has become a very busy place, filled with several activities from stars, galaxies and human activity, technological advancements which drown out the signal from the neutral hydrogen. However, this signal that the researchers are trying to capture is an electromagnetic radio emission which has been emitted by the neutral hydrogen at a wavelength of about 21 centimetres.

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How are scientists tracking the 12 billion-year-old Dark Age Signal?

According to the reports, Morales and his colleagues have developed highly sophisticated methods to filter out all the worldly noise and bring them closer to that signal. The researchers announced that they had filtered out electromagnetic interference from more than 21 hours of Murchison Array data in the year 2019. The team of scientists from the University of Washington have about 3,000 hours of additional emission data collected by the radio telescope. However, the researchers are trying to filter out interference and get even closer to that obscure signal from neutral hydrogen.

All Images ~ Max Goldberg via University of Washington

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