Astronomers detect hydrogen gas signal emitted before Earth existed
14 Jun 2016 by Evoluted New Media
Astronomers have managed to detect hydrogen gas signals from a galaxy that existed before the Earth even formed - more than five billion light years away.
Astronomers have managed to observe hydrogen gas signals emitted from a galaxy more than five billion light years away - taking longer to travel here than Earth has existed.
It was detected by an international team at the Very Large Array (VLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US and is almost double the previous distance measured by scientists in 2014. The researchers said the galaxy would have contained billions of young, massive stars surrounded by clouds of hydrogen gas.
Dr Ximena Fernández, lead author of the study, from Rutgers University, said: “Due to the upgrade of the VLA, this is the first time we've been able to directly measure atomic hydrogen in a galaxy this far from Earth. These signals would have begun their journey before our planet even existed, and after five billion years of travelling through space without hitting anything, they've fallen into the telescope and allowed us to see this distant galaxy for the very first time.”
The researchers came across the hydrogen signals after 178 hours of observing time with the VLA as part of a survey called the COSMOS HI Large Extragalactic Survey (CHILES). This will end once it has been used for more than 1,000 observing time hours.
Dr Attila Popping, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia said the team used Amazon’s cloud servers to process and move the vast amounts of data collected. The VLA consists of 27 radio antenna measuring 25 metres in diameter arranged in a Y shape. Combined, this allows the antennas to simulate the resolution of a single antenna 36km across with the sensitivity of a dish with a diameter of 130m.
The international team of astronomers included researchers from the US, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Chile and Korea. The previous record was achieved by two researchers from Swinburne University who used the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico to detect atomic hydrogen in a galaxy three billion lights years away.The work was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
