China Prepares 10 Hunt Satellites for Universal Dark Age Signals, What is it?

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The goal is to glimpse into the so-called cosmic dark ages or mysterious eras before the first stars began to shine.

The trick, researchers will collect very long waves that are faint and stretchy, which emerged from the hydrogen atom that was formed after the big bang of the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang).

The teams’ initiative proposal is an innovative alternative to the much more expensive and technically challenging research of installing a permanent telescope on the surface of the far side of the Moon.

The mission, led by Chen Xuelei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), is one of a number of proposed astronomy, exploration, earth science, heliophysics and exoplanet missions competing for approval under the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ New Horizons Program. .

Launch South China Morning Post, if approved in the next few weeks, the DSL mission could enlighten understanding of the Cosmic Dark Ages. Astronomers believe that some of the first stars appeared when the universe was 200 million years old.

Later, the small satellites will be unequally spaced from each other, the closest being only 1 km, to hunt for signals with frequencies as low as around 1-30 megahertz.

The parent satellite accurately measures each small satellite’s position. Signals sent from two small satellites are mixed using a technique called interferometry. Its purpose is to create a high-resolution photo of the source being observed.

“With its dynamic design, Hongmeng can complete all high-resolution, undetectable low-frequency surveys in just one year,” said Wu Ji, former director of the National Space Science Center who helped with the Hongmeng project, but is no longer involved.

What is the cosmic dark age?

Quoted from Astronomythe cosmic dark ages were when the universe was shrouded in a mist of neutral hydrogen, which trapped the light of the first post-Big Bang stars and galaxies.

At that time, the universe was believed to be empty; no suns, no planets, just a mist of neutral hydrogen. The fog didn’t clear up until 1 billion years after the Big Bang, when neutral hydrogen was re-ionized.

Unable to escape the dark age environment, light could not travel outward across the universe to hit detectors on Earth, nearly 13 billion years later.

Trying to peek into the dark ages is like trying to see a light bulb through thick and dark fog.

However, by analogizing it with the Dark Ages on Earth around 500 to 1000 AD which then set in motion the Renaissance, the cosmic dark ages were also a time of major transformation.

“This period is special because it marks the transition between the very simple universe and the [sekaligus] very complex,” said Avi Loeb, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

“Black holes, neutron stars, even life finally here on Earth, its roots are planted in the dark ages. If we want to understand where we came from, that’s where the story begins.”

Even so, scientists are still looking for the exact location and mode of the transition. Astronomers also still wonder why we can’t see any light from objects that shone during the dark ages.

“The time it takes for a photon to escape [hidrogen] longer than the age of the universe,” explains Bahram Mobasher, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside.

This means that light cannot reach us no matter how long we wait for it to arrive.

The dark ages don’t last forever. The universe became transparent to UV light after the formation of the first stars and galaxies (a few hundred million years after the Big Bang).

The first few stars were so large and bright, their light was energetic enough to knock electrons off the surrounding hydrogen atoms in the process of ionization. Ionized hydrogen does not absorb or scatter light like neutral hydrogen.

“The first stars and galaxies were formed, and their light brought the universe out of the dark ages,” Mobasher said.

[Gambas:Video CNN]

(can/lth)

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