Latest news with #NatureAstronomy
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
A radio signal from the beginning of the universe could reveal how everything began
A radio signal from the early universe could allow us to understand how everything that surrounds us began. The signal – known as the 21-centimetre signal – could finally let us understand how the first stars and galaxies switched on, and brought the universe from darkness to light. 'This is a unique opportunity to learn how the universe's first light emerged from the darkness,' said co-author Anastasia Fialkov from Cambridge University, in a statement. 'The transition from a cold, dark universe to one filled with stars is a story we're only beginning to understand.' The signal comes to us from more than 13 billion years ago, just a hundred million years after the Big Bang. The faint glow is created by hydrogen atoms that fill up the space between regions of space where stars are being formed. Scientists now believe they will be able to use the nature of that signal to better understand the early universe. They will do that with a radio antenna called REACH – the Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen – which will try and capture radio signals to reveal data about the beginnings of the universe. To better understand how that project might work, researchers created a model that predicted how REACH as well as another project called the Square Kilometre Array will be able to provide information about the masses and other details of the first stars. 'We are the first group to consistently model the dependence of the 21-centimetre signal of the masses of the first stars, including the impact of ultraviolet starlight and X-ray emissions from X-ray binaries produced when the first stars die,' said Professor Fialkov. 'These insights are derived from simulations that integrate the primordial conditions of the universe, such as the hydrogen-helium composition produced by the Big Bang.' 'The predictions we are reporting have huge implications for our understanding of the nature of the very first stars in the Universe,' said co-author Eloy de Lera Acedo, Principal Investigator of the REACH telescope. 'We show evidence that our radio telescopes can tell us details about the mass of those first stars and how these early lights may have been very different from today's stars. 'Radio telescopes like REACH are promising to unlock the mysteries of the infant Universe, and these predictions are essential to guide the radio observations we are doing from the Karoo, in South Africa.' The work is described in a new paper, 'Determination of the mass distribution of the first stars from the 21-cm signal', published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The Independent
11 hours ago
- Science
- The Independent
Space signal could reveal how universe turned from dark to light
A radio signal from the early universe, known as the 21-centimetre signal, offers a unique opportunity to understand how the first stars and galaxies emerged. This faint glow originates from over 13 billion years ago, approximately 100 million years after the Big Bang, and is created by hydrogen atoms. Scientists plan to use a radio antenna called REACH (Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen) to capture these signals and gather data about the universe's beginnings. Researchers developed a model predicting how REACH and the Square Kilometre Array can provide information about the masses and other details of the first stars. The work, published in Nature Astronomy, suggests that radio telescopes like REACH can reveal crucial details about the nature and mass of these early stars, which may have differed from today's stars.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
What Astronomers Just Discovered Between Galaxies Changes Everything
For decades, scientists have known that a massive chunk of the universe's ordinary matter was missing. Not dark matter, the elusive substance that doesn't interact with light, but regular, everyday matter made of atoms. And now, thanks to a brilliant use of cosmic radio signals, that mystery may finally be solved. In a new study published in Nature Astronomy, astronomers used fast radio bursts (FRBs)—brief, millisecond-long blasts of energy from deep space—to detect where all that missing matter was hiding: in the vast stretches between galaxies, known as the intergalactic medium. These FRBs are powerful. Though short-lived, they emit as much energy in one burst as the sun does in 30 years. When they pass through space, they act like cosmic flashlights, lighting up the otherwise invisible gas that floats between galaxies. The team measured how the light from 69 FRBs slowed as it moved through this matter, allowing them to "weigh" the fog they passed through. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons," explained Caltech assistant professor Vikram Ravi, using the scientific term for this ordinary matter. "With FRBs as the backlight, we now know roughly where the rest of the matter in the universe is hiding." The results show about 76 percent of the universe's baryonic matter exists in this intergalactic fog. Meanwhile, 15 percent of the baryonic matter surrounds galaxies in halos and just 9 percent resides inside the galaxies themselves. This breakthrough was made possible by telescopes like Caltech's Deep Synoptic Array and Australia's Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, which helped localize the FRBs' origins. Caltech's upcoming DSA-2000 radio telescope, set to detect 10,000 FRBs per year, could be the key to even deeper cosmological insights. For astronomers, it's a milestone moment—one that brings us closer to understanding not just where we come from, but how the universe is truly structured. What Astronomers Just Discovered Between Galaxies Changes Everything first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 17, 2025
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Mysterious deep-space radio signals reveal location of the universe's 'missing matter'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Roughly half of all the regular matter in the universe has been unaccounted for — until now. In a new study, researchers claim that, using short, extragalactic flashes called fast radio bursts (FRBs), they have accounted for all the baryonic matter — the "normal" matter that makes up stars, planets, and other objects that interact with light — that we expect to find in the universe. Much of the "missing" matter is spread thinly through the space between galaxies, according to the study, which was published June 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Baryonic matter, which is composed of particles like protons and neutrons, makes up just 5% of the universe. Another 27% is invisible dark matter, and the rest is mysterious dark energy that drives the universe's accelerating expansion. But scientists have been able to observe only about half as much baryonic matter as they expect to have been produced during the Big Bang. To account for the remaining matter, the researchers looked to 69 FRBs to light up the intergalactic space that lies between the bursts and Earth. No one knows what causes FRBs, but most of the powerful, millisecond-long radio flashes originate outside the Milky Way. "The FRBs shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium, and by precisely measuring how the light slows down, we can weigh that fog, even when it's too faint to see," study co-author Liam Connor, an astronomer at Harvard University, said in a statement. Related: Earth's upper atmosphere could hold a missing piece of the universe, new study hints Using this technique, Connor and his colleagues found that about 76% of regular matter in the universe lies in the intergalactic medium, the hot gas that fills the space between galaxies. Another 15% or so can be found in galaxy halos — the hot, spherical regions at the edges of galaxies. The remaining baryonic matter makes up the stars, planets and cold gases inside galaxies themselves, the team proposed. "It's like we're seeing the shadow of all the baryons, with FRBs as the backlight," study co-author Vikram Ravi, an astronomer at Caltech, said in the statement. "If you see a person in front of you, you can find out a lot about them. But if you just see their shadow, you still know that they're there and roughly how big they are." The findings observationally account for all baryonic matter in the universe for the first time, pinpointing not just whether this matter exists but also where it is concentrated in the universe. RELATED STORIES —Where do fast radio bursts come from? Astronomers tie mysterious eruptions to massive galaxies. —Fast radio burst traced to the outskirts of an ancient 'graveyard' galaxy — and the cause remains a mystery —Ghostly galaxy without dark matter baffles astronomers "I would say that the missing baryons problem is essentially solved," Nicolás Tejos, an astronomer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso who was not involved in the study, told Science magazine. "Thanks to FRBs, we have now been able to close this baryon budget." In future studies, the team hopes to leverage the Deep Synoptic Array-2000, a proposed network of 2,000 radio telescopes that will scan the entire sky over five years, to pinpoint up to 10,000 new FRBs per year and investigate the universe's baryonic matter in even more detail.
AsiaOne
4 days ago
- Science
- AsiaOne
Astronomers locate universe's 'missing' matter, World News
WASHINGTON — The universe has two kinds of matter. There is invisible dark matter, known only because of its gravitational effects on a grand scale. And there is ordinary matter such as gas, dust, stars, planets and earthly things like cookie dough and canoes. Scientists estimate that ordinary matter makes up only about 15 per cent of all matter, but have long struggled to document where all of it is located, with about half unaccounted for. With the help of powerful bursts of radio waves emanating from 69 locations in the cosmos, researchers now have found the "missing" matter. It was hiding primarily as thinly distributed gas spread out in the vast expanses between galaxies and was detected thanks to the effect the matter has on the radio waves travelling through space, the researchers said. This tenuous gas comprises the intergalactic medium, sort of a fog between galaxies. Scientists previously had determined the total amount of ordinary matter using a calculation involving light observed that was left over from the Big Bang event roughly 13.8 billion years ago that initiated the universe. But they could not actually find half of this matter. "So the question we've been grappling with was: Where is it hiding? The answer appears to be: in a diffuse wispy cosmic web, well away from galaxies," said Harvard University astronomy professor Liam Connor, lead author of the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. The researchers found that a smaller slice of the missing matter resides in the halos of diffuse material surrounding galaxies, including our Milky Way. Ordinary matter is composed of baryons, which are the subatomic particles protons and neutrons needed to build atoms. "People, planets and stars are made of baryons. Dark matter, on the other hand, is a mysterious substance that makes up the bulk of the matter in the universe. We do not know what new particle or substance makes up dark matter. We know exactly what the ordinary matter is, we just didn't know where it was," Connor said. So how did so much ordinary matter end up in the middle of nowhere? Vast amounts of gas are ejected from galaxies when massive stars explode in supernovas or when supermassive black holes inside galaxies "burp," expelling material after consuming stars or gas. "If the universe were a more boring place, or the laws of physics were different, you might find that ordinary matter would all fall into galaxies, cool down, form stars, until every proton and neutron were a part of a star. But that's not what happens," Connor said. Thus, these violent physical processes are sloshing ordinary matter around across immense distances and consigning it to the cosmic wilderness. This gas is not in its usual state but rather in the form of plasma, with its electrons and protons separated. The mechanism used to detect and measure the missing ordinary matter involved phenomena called fast radio bursts, or FRBs - powerful pulses of radio waves emanating from faraway points in the universe. While their exact cause remains mysterious, a leading hypothesis is that they are produced by highly magnetised neutron stars, compact stellar embers left over after a massive star dies in a supernova explosion. As light in radio wave frequencies travels from the source of the FRBs to Earth, it becomes dispersed into different wavelengths, just as a prism turns sunlight into a rainbow. The degree of this dispersion depends on how much matter is in the light's path, providing the mechanism for pinpointing and measuring matter where it otherwise would remain unfound. Scientists used radio waves travelling from 69 FRBs, 39 of which were discovered using a network of 110 telescopes located at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory near Bishop, California, called the Deep Synoptic Array. The remaining 30 were discovered using other telescopes. The FRBs were located at distances up to 9.1 billion light-years from Earth, the farthest of these on record. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). With all the ordinary matter now accounted for, the researchers were able to determine its distribution. About 76 per cent resides in intergalactic space, about 15 per cent in galaxy halos and the remaining nine per cent concentrated within galaxies, primarily as stars or gas. "We can now move on to even more important mysteries regarding the ordinary matter in the universe," Connor said. "And beyond that: what is the nature of dark matter and why is it so difficult to measure directly?" [[nid:714389]]
