ionising radiation tagged posts

New Clues about how Ancient Galaxies Lit up the Universe

Spiral galaxy (stock illustration).
Credit: © Alexandr Mitiuc / Adobe Stock

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that some of the Universe’s earliest galaxies were brighter than expected. The excess light is a by-product of the galaxies releasing incredibly high amounts of ionising radiation. The finding offers clues to the cause of the Epoch of Reionisation, a major cosmic event that transformed the universe from being mostly opaque to the brilliant starscape seen today.

Researchers report on observations of some of the first galaxies to form in the universe, less than 1 billion years after the big bang (or a little more than 13 billion years ago)...

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