Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature
Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature (EDGES) is the name of two roughly table-sized spectrometers - radio antennas that are operated by the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Australian outback in the Mid-West Radio Quiet Zone , a protection zone for radio equipment . The measurements were taken in 2015.
The experimental set-up is used to research the early universe , when the first stars ignited during the Cosmic Dawn around 180 to 270 million years after the Big Bang and the universe became transparent. Due to the ultraviolet radiation of these early stars, the hydrogen present in large quantities reionized ( EoR = Epoch of Reionization). Radio astronomers under the direction of Arizona State University found a strong red-shifted weak signal in the cosmic background radiation , which can be interpreted as HI absorption lines and represents the earliest evidence of primodial hydrogen. The readings suggest that the temperature of the hydrogen gas was lower than expected at the beginning of Cosmic Dawn. The interaction with dark matter may have caused an additional cooling. That would be surprising insofar as dark matter is usually only noticeable through its gravitation . The results have yet to be confirmed by other scientists.
Web links
- EDGES on the Haystack Observatory website
- Judd D. Bowman, Alan EE Rogers, Raul A. Monsalve, Thomas J. Mozdzen and Nivedita Mahesh in Nature 555 : An absorption profile centered at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum , pp. 67-70 (March 1, 2018)
Individual evidence
- ↑ EDGES: Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature on the Haystack Observatory website
- ↑ Jan Hattenbach in Spectrum from February 28, 2018: News from the first stars
Coordinates: 26 ° 41 ′ 49.9 ″ S , 116 ° 38 ′ 20.5 ″ E