Cosmic dawn: Astronomers detect signals from first stars in the universe, 180m years after Big Bang

ack

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If this research holds water and the signal stands up to scrutiny, this is huge

The faint radio signals suggest the universe was lifted out of total darkness 180m years after the big bang in a momentous transition known as the cosmic dawn.

The faint imprint left by the glow of the earliest stars also appears to contain new and unexpected evidence about the existence and nature of dark matter which, if confirmed by independent observatories, would mark a second major breakthrough.

“Finding this minuscule signal has opened a new window on the early universe,” said Judd Bowman of Arizona State University, whose team set out to make the detection more than a decade ago. “It’s unlikely we’ll be able to see any earlier into the history of stars in our lifetime.”

Screen Shot 2018-02-28 at 5.02.53 PM.jpg

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25792
https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-detect-signals-from-the-very-first-stars-in-our-universe
https://www.theguardian.com/science...tect-signals-from-first-stars-in-the-universe
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/first-stars-universe-big-bang-edges-space-science/
 

Al M.

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Fascinating, thanks!
 

ack

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You are welcome! If you guys read the whole thing carefully, and especially the original Nature paper I cited, what makes it even more fascinating is that the signal is at ~78MHz, right where many of our radio waves are. So the researchers took two years to weed out all other possibilities, and despite the claimed results, other researchers must also confirm the same.

And regarding dark matter

“It would be extremely exciting if this was a signal of dark matter, and it's not impossible,” says Tracy Slatyer of MIT.

But, she notes, it’s way too early to accept that conclusion. An alternate possibility is that there are simply more photons for the hydrogen gas to absorb, though it’s not obvious where all those photons would come from in the early universe. So she and others are waiting for independent confirmation of the EDGES result before diving too deep into the possible dark matter scenarios.

“I will be more comfortable once we’ve had a chance to try and think about how to fit this into frameworks about how we understand dark matter and galaxies,” Furlanetto says. “Because it is so unusual in comparison to our expectations, I do worry that it is something entirely unrelated. I have no idea what that could be.”
 

astrotoy

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Ack, thanks for the post. This is definitely neat stuff. However, you see all through the articles that there is a lot of caution. The main reason for the caution is that the current theories of both dark matter and star formation would be both overthrown by this observation. The observation itself is using a newly developed type of radio telescope. So if the observation can be confirmed by a completely different instrument, that would be very important.

Astronomy (and most sciences) progress by a slow dance between observation and theory. First one leads, and then the other. In this case observation of the motions of stars and galaxies indicated that there was something pulling on them that was much bigger than the other stars and other visible matter. It could not be observed, but its mass and general distribution could be deduced from how it pulled on the stars and galaxies. It was dubbed "dark matter" and has become one of two big mysteries in modern astronomy (the other is dark energy). With the observation of the effects of dark matter, the theoreticians started working on new theories of what could this dark matter be - based on the observations combined with what we know about the nature of matter (so called standard model of particle physics - what led Higg's to propose his boson). This led to a prediction of what the dark matter would look like. Parallel to that we have the standard model of cosmology which starts with big bang and ends with the formation and life of stars and planets that we see today, and the eventual future of the universe. It says that stars should form at a certain time after the Big Bang. This current observation directly challenges this prediction of the standard cosmological model. If it is correct, then the theoreticians will go back to work and see what is necessary to modify in their model to get stars formed so much earlier than predicted. That could lead to really interesting developments in science. Or it could be that the observations are wrong. Going back to the top of my post, the observations of these stars also may shed observational clues as to the nature of dark matter - implying that dark matter doesn't fit the current theory based on the standard model of particle physics.

At this point, I am skeptical. Knocking big holes in both the standard model of particle physics and the standard model of cosmology is a heavy duty observation. But similar observations have happened before. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics went to astronomers whose observations led to the discovery of dark energy, shaking up the standard model of cosmology (the universe is expanding and accelerating its expansion, not slowing down.) If the observation is right, then there well could be a Nobel Prize in their future.

Larry (your astronomer friend)
 

ack

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Thanks Larry; I am skeptical too - have to be - but also optimistic. What is really personally exciting is that I have gotten my son into this stuff, and he's gaga over Michio Kaku and others. In fact, we have a picture with him from a recent book signing. He gets it, and I am thrilled!
 

astrotoy

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Thanks Larry; I am skeptical too - have to be - but also optimistic. What is really personally exciting is that I have gotten my son into this stuff, and he's gaga over Michio Kaku and others. In fact, we have a picture with him from a recent book signing. He gets it, and I am thrilled!

Ack, great to have your son excited. How old is he. I think I have posted before that Michio (he was "Mike" in college) was my physics lab partner at Harvard my sophomore year, 53 years ago. He was a year behind me. We then both went across the country to UC Berkeley when we both got our PhD's, mine in astronomy and his in physics, but, because of the Vietnam war and the draft, I didn't overlap with him there. Physics and astronomy were starting to really overlap in those days and continue to this day, although the departments are separate, they are essentially in adjoining buildings at Cal. I lost track of him until he began to appear on TV

Larry
 

Ron Resnick

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Does this discovery necessarily undermine the standard model of cosmology, or can this discovery be reconciled with the Big Bang?
 

ack

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Ack, great to have your son excited. How old is he. I think I have posted before that Michio (he was "Mike" in college) was my physics lab partner my sophomore year, 53 years ago. He was a year behind me. We then both went across the country to UC Berkeley when we both got our PhD's, mine in astronomy and his in physics, but, because of the Vietnam war and the draft, I didn't overlap with him there. Physics and astronomy were starting to really overlap in those days and continue to this day, although the departments are separate, they are essentially in adjoining buildings at Cal. I lost track of him until he began to appear on TV

Larry

He's 14:

with-michio.jpeg
 

ack

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Does this discovery necessarily undermine the standard model of cosmology, or can this discovery be reconciled with the Big Bang?

We don't know yet. To give a layman's - and therefore distorted - interpretation of the alleged finding, it's like trying to prove that these photons are different than any other - if you can imagine that.
 

GMKF

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We don't know yet. To give a layman's - and therefore distorted - interpretation of the alleged finding, it's like trying to prove that these photons are different than any other - if you can imagine that.

Which basically puts a giant hole in the middle of the boson-theory. To my degree of understanding.
 

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