The Hydrogen Map: How a Radio Telescope Heard Half the Universe
About this episode
The episode discusses the detection of a hydrogen signal from billions of light years away and reviews recent space news.
Anna and Avery open the Weekend Wrap with a genuine first: South Africa's MeerKAT has detected the 21-centimetre hydrogen signal from four to five billion light years away using radio data alone — no optical galaxy survey propping it up — proving out the technique the Square Kilometre Array will use to measure dark energy. Then the week in review: Roman's coronagraph wakes up, Starship Flight 14 gets a date, Mars turns out to be lopsided inside, BepiColombo lets go, LZ's one unexplained flash, and a centaur caught in the act of becoming a comet. Plus the sky for the week ahead, both hemispheres. Links & sources · University of Manchester — Astronomers use MeerKAT to directly detect faint hydrogen signal from the distant Universe — https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/astronomers-use-meerkat-to-directly-detect-faint-hydrogen-signal-from-the-distant-universe · The Astrophysical Journal Letters — Paul, Wolz, Santos, Chen et al. (paper DOI) — https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae808f · American Astronomical Society — release listing — https://aas.org/node/730547 · Phys.org — MeerKAT directly detects faint hydrogen signal from the distant universe —…
More episodes of Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News
- Half the Neutron Stars
- A Hundred and Nine Flashes
- The Smallest Things Remember
- The Moon in Five Hours
- Europe Launches From Europe — And Two White Dwarfs Six Minutes Apart
- BepiColombo Lets Go: Eight Years, Nine Flybys, One Irreversible Moment
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News podcast page.