Astronomers using a radio telescope in India have recorded the most distant radio signal from a galaxy, fueling hopes that secrets of the early universe can be revealed using existing telescope technology, Forbes reported.
The signal came from a galaxy called SDSSJ0826+5630 located 8,8 billionmillions light years. This essentially means that it exists closer to the Big Bang than any other galaxy previously detected using radio astronomy, underlines Forbes.
The technique they used
They used a technique called gravitational lensing, a ripple in space-time that allows background objects to be greatly magnified relative to foreground objects.
Radio signals get weaker the further away one is galaxy από τη Γη, γεγονός που καθιστά δύσκολο την detection by today's radio telescopes, but a new study published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society gives hope that detecting galaxies at much greater distances from Earth may now be within reach.
"A galaxy emits different kinds of radio signals," said Arnab Chakraborty, a postdoctoral researcher studying cosmology in the Department of Physics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "Until now, it has only been possible to pick up this particular signal from a nearby galaxy, limiting our knowledge to those galaxies closest to Earth."