Prepared by: Mustafa Al-Zoubi
Astronomers from Canada and India captured a radio signal from the galaxy “SDSSJ0826 + 5630” with the help of a giant telescope in India, regarding 9 billion light-years away from Earth.
The radio wave will allow astronomers to understand the early universe, which is believed to be 13.7 billion years old.
“The signal goes back 8.8 billion years,” said Arnab Chakraborty, a cosmologist and co-author of the study on the wave detection.
He added, “The signal was not sent by aliens, but it came from a star-forming galaxy that was emitted when the universe was only 4.9 billion years old.”
This is the first signal of a wireless signal from such a huge distance. “The galaxy emits different types of radio signals,” Chakraborty added.
Scientists emphasized that the discovery of the wave was particularly important because the frequency was at a specific wavelength known as the “21 cm line”, also known as the hydrogen line, which is the spectral line of electromagnetic radiation with a frequency of 1420.
Hydrogen is spread through space and might help map galaxies. The Giant Telescope in India was able to pick up the faint signal due to gravitational lensing.