Dark Ages

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe

Anonymous — Sat, 15 May 2021 19:09:00 +0000

A Telescope On The Moon Could Illuminate The Dark Ages Of The Universe Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/15/2021 - 13:09

Eric Betz

From �鶹��Ƶ: Some 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit. And as the cosmos grew and grew, it also cooled, until the building blocks of matter — subatomic particles called quarks and gluons — could form. Eventually, this quark soup aggregated into atoms. Atoms merged into larger molecules. Gas filled the universe. Yet the cosmos would sit like this — dark — for hundreds of millions of years before light shone from the first stars and galaxies.

We understand parts of what happened in the early universe. But a huge blank still haunts astronomers. They call it the “dark ages” because, with no starlight to study, they’re left guessing where all the familiar stuff came from. How did we go from a gas-filled universe to the one we now see in the night sky?

“The early universe had no galaxies, just hot stuff. As things cooled off, something had to happen before the galaxies formed,” says Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Honestly, we’ve got lots of stories and lots of predictions, but no measurements.”

Unravelling this mystery is “one of the great objectives of modern-day astronomy,” he adds.

To solve it, scientists and engineers have identified an unlikely location for their work, one that could help shape the next generation of astronomical research: the farside of the moon. Read more...

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CU researcher leads lunar observation project: Satellite will help the study of the universe’s “dark ages”

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 21:59:57 +0000

CU researcher leads lunar observation project: Satellite will help the study of the universe’s “dark ages” Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/01/2018 - 15:59

Charlie Brennan

From the Daily Camera: University of Colorado researchers are planning to put a satellite in orbit around the moon to observe what they call the universe’s “dark ages” — an era just 15 million to 30 million years after the Big Bang, before the first stars illuminated the cosmic dawn. “What we’re doing is we’re really opening up a whole new window to the early universe that has never been explored before,” said Jack Burns, a CU professor of astrophysics and planetary science and also vice president emeritus for academic affairs and research at the university. Read more...

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Dark side of the moon holds clues to early universe

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 19:18:19 +0000

Dark side of the moon holds clues to early universe Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/25/2018 - 13:18

Daniel Strain

From CU Boulder Today: The far side of the moon could give CU Boulder researchers an unprecedented look back at the early “dark ages” of the universe before the first stars had begun to flare into existence. NASA recently picked the Dark Ages Polarimetry Pathfinder (DAPPER) as one of nine small satellite missions that it will study for a potential launch next decade. The DAPPER team, which is led by CU Boulder astrophysicist Jack Burns and includes scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and NASA’s Ames Research Center, will spend the next six months crafting a detailed design of this proposed mission.

The goal is to put a satellite in orbit around the moon and, from the isolated environment of the lunar far side, observe signals from clouds of hydrogen gas in the early cosmos.

A 2018 study discovered a possible signal from the universe's first stars, which would have been blue and much bigger than stars today.

If greenlighted, the mission would allow astrophysicists to unwind the universe’s clock, revealing new information about how stars, galaxies and black holes came into being. Burns said that DAPPER could also mark a new step in lunar exploration, transforming the moon into a laboratory for far-reaching science. Read more...

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