Using data from India’s SARAS3 radio telescope, a research team led by scientists from the University of Cambridge has succeeded in demystifying the earliest universe events that occurred 200 million years after the Big Bang. We do not have the opportunity to see the oldest stars and galaxies yet, but the information obtained points to their basic features.

The scientists looked for information about the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the early universe in the SARAS3 data. Information about hydrogen clouds and their motion is obtained by radio astronomers based on the detection of the 21 cm radio signal line or neutral hydrogen radio line.

The data analysis was based on the fact that a dense cloud of neutral hydrogen, absorbing light from the first stars in the universe like a fog, could be a secondary source of radiation, and based on these data, the physical parameters of both stars in the early stages of the universe and galaxies. this fog is hiding from us.

As it turned out, a surprise awaited the scientists – a 21 cm line with the amplitude of the required density was not found in the data. But there was a discovery in this failure. The absence of a signal made it possible to impose constraints on the mass and energy of the first stars and, accordingly, the first galaxies. Thus, shortly after the Big Bang, the evolutionary model of the stars received important explanations. Astrophysicists will now have a better idea of ​​how large and energetic first-generation stars and galaxies can be, and the researchers hope the refined data will help them see “reflections” in the star’s neutral hydrogen cloud in the universe. .

Scientists hope to actually record such objects by the end of the current decade, when the next generation of radio telescopes becomes operational, particularly the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) field in Australia. But even modern gadgets can surprise. For example, James Webb saw the oldest galaxy candidate 286 million years after the Big Bang.