A radio signal sent from a galaxy nearly nine billion light-years away is received by a scientist on Earth

A radio signal from a galaxy nearly 9 billion light years away from Earth has been picked up by scientists.

Researchers in Canada and India have been able to pick up the signal from the galaxy ‘SDSSJ0826+5630’ using a giant telescope in India.

The radio wave could allow astronomers to look back into the past and understand the early universe – believed to be about 13.7 billion years old.

“It’s the equivalent of looking back in time 8.8 billion years,” Arnab Chakraborty, a cosmologist and co-author of the wave detection study, told me. The subway.

The radio wave could allow astronomers to look back into the past and understand the early universe

The signal wasn’t sent by aliens — before you jump to conclusions — but instead came from the star-forming galaxy that was sent out when the universe was just 4.9 billion years old.

This is the first radio signal detection of its kind at such a huge distance.

“A galaxy emits different kinds of radio signals,” Chakraborty said The subway. “Until now, it was only possible to pick up this specific signal from a nearby galaxy, so our knowledge is limited to those galaxies closer to Earth.”

The Royal Astronomical Society announced the groundbreaking revelation in their monthly communications.

The wave detection was a particularly crucial discovery because the frequency was at a specific wavelength known as the “21 cm line.” This is also called the hydrogen line and is the spectral line of electromagnetic radiation with a frequency of 1420.

Hydrogen is scattered throughout space and can help map galaxies. The 21cm line is used for this.

The giant telescope in India was able to pick up the faint signal thanks to gravitational lensing. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon

Illustration showing how the signal was detected from the galaxy 9 billion light-years away. Another galaxy bent the radio signal allowing the Indian telescope to pick it up

The study’s co-author explained to The Metro that gravitational lensing was a naturally occurring phenomenon that “amplifies the signal coming from a distant object to help us see into the early universe.”

Another galaxy bent the radio signal emitted by ‘SDSSJ0826+5630’, magnifying the wave for the telescope in India to pick it up.

Researchers have used the detection to measure the atomic mass content of the galaxy. Scientists found that this particular galaxy is almost twice as massive as the stars visible to us from Earth.