A telescope in India has picked up a radio signal coming directly from a galaxy 8.8 billion light-years from Earth.
Astronomers in India have captured a radio signal from a galaxy nearly 9 billion light-years from our planet, making it the most distant radio signal ever recorded.
SDSSJ0826 + 5630 is the name of the galaxy from which the famous radio signal comes, which was captured with the help of a giant radio telescope called Metrewave, located in India. It is composed of 30 parabolic antennas and has captured a signal representing a line of emission corresponding to neutral hydrogen, the main component of the non-ionized universe.
With an age of about 13.7 billion years, this signal was emitted when the Universe was only 4.9 billion years old and can be an important source of information. It could shed light on the formation of the universe, as indicated in the following study report, Detection of H i 21 cm emission from a strongly lensed galaxy at z ∼ 1.3 | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Oxford Academic (oup.com). This report also tells us that if this signal could be detected, it was due to the effect of the gravitational magnifying glass, which amplified it thanks to an object located between us and the galaxy from which it came.
To date, the most distant similar signal ever observed came from a cosmic object 4.4 billion light-years away. Neutral hydrogen is a treasure trove because it was formed during a period called the Dark Ages, 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when electrons and protons combined with neutrons to form the first stars and galaxies.
When a star is formed, it emits light in the ultraviolet, which causes hydrogen atoms to ionize and lose their neutrality. As stars form, the intensity of the ultraviolet light decreases and some of the ionized hydrogen atoms become neutral again. Simply put, studying the signal will allow us to better understand the formation of stars and this famous "dark age". The first results have allowed us to determine the composition of the Galaxy. Finally, we note that the first results have allowed us to determine the gas composition of the galaxy SDSSJ0826 + 5630, which would be extremely massive.