COMAP radio survey tagged posts

An Ocean of Galaxies Awaits

Photo of COMAP's radio dish
COMAP’s 10.4-meter “Leighton” radio dish at Owens Valley Radio Observatory.Credit: OVRO/Caltech

New COMAP radio survey will peer beneath the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of galaxies to unveil a hidden era of star formation. Sometime around 400 million years after the birth of our universe, the first stars began to form. The universe’s so-called dark ages came to an end and a new light-filled era began. More and more galaxies began to take shape and served as factories for churning out new stars, a process that reached a peak about 4 billion years after the Big Bang.

Luckily for astronomers, this bygone era can be observed. Distant light takes time to reach us, and our telescopes can pick up light emitted by galaxies and stars billions of years ago (our universe is 13.8 billion years old)...

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