{"id":17919,"date":"2022-02-07T16:01:33","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T16:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=17919"},"modified":"2022-02-07T16:01:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-07T16:01:33","slug":"cosmic-water-cloud-uncovers-temperature-early-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/cosmic-water-cloud-uncovers-temperature-early-universe\/17919\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmic water cloud uncovers the temperature of the early Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"
An international collaboration of researchers has found a novel method for determining the temperature of the cosmic microwave background less than a billion years after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n
Utilising IRAM’s NOEMA radio telescope array, the team used a cloud of water vapour to uncover the state of the Universe at this incredibly early stage in its history. This exciting discovery reinforces the theory that the Universe cooled incredibly quickly and opens up new possibilities for the study of dark energy.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s results have been published in the journal Nature<\/em>.<\/p>\n The temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation \u2013 a relic of the energy released by the Big Bang \u2013 has for the first time been determined at an early stage in the history of the Universe, just 880 million years after it was first created.<\/p>\n The researchers\u2019 incredible findings were attained by an international team of astrophysicists who employed NOEMA to examine a massive starburst galaxy, HFLS3, which was active at that time in cosmic history.<\/p>\n NOEMA is the most powerful radio telescope array in the Northern Hemisphere. It is situated in the French Alps and managed by the Institut de Radioastronomie Millim\u00e9trique<\/a> (IRAM), which was established in 1979 by the CNRS and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG, Germany). The Instituto Geogr\u00e1fico Nacional (IGN, Spain) then joined as a third partner in 1990.<\/p>\n They found that a cloud of cold water vapour in HFLS3 was casting a shadow on the cosmic background radiation. This shadow occurred as a result of the fact that the water vapour absorbs the warmer radiation from the cosmic microwave background as it moves closer to Earth: its degree of darkening highlights the temperature difference.<\/p>\nNOEMA<\/h3>\n
Cosmic background radiation<\/h3>\n