New Technique Reveals Clearer Picture of the Origins of our Universe

There may be a new technique that will give astronomers a clearer picture of our universe. Researchers have developed a method that can be used in the next generation of radio telescopes in order to help make new findings about stars, exoplanets and space.

As astronomers use telescopes to peer into space, they receive a glimpse into the past. Some stellar bodies are located millions or billions of light-years away, which means that researchers can see how the universe has changed over time and get a better understanding of its history.

"Distant, younger galaxies look very different to nearby galaxies, which means that they've changed, or evolved, over time," said Jacinta Delhaize, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The challenge is to try and figure out what physical properties within the galaxy have changed, and how and why this has happened."

Hydrogen is the building block of the universe. It not only forms stars, but also keeps galaxies "alive." In the past, galaxies formed stars at a much faster rate than they do today. It's possible that galaxies simply had more hydrogen during the early stages of our universe.

In order to see whether or not these young systems did indeed have more hydrogen, the researchers set off to observe the gas in distant galaxies. There was only one problem: the faint radio signals of this distant hydrogen gas are almost impossible to detect directly.

In order to overcome this obstacle, the scientists developed their new method. They combined weak signals from thousands of individual galaxies, stacking them to produce a strong averaged signal that's easier to study. This allowed the scientists to see details of far off galaxies.

"What we are trying to achieve with stacking is sort of like detecting a faint whisper in a room full of people shouting," said Delhaize in a news release. "When you combine together thousands of whispers, you get a shout that you can hear above a noisy room, just like combining the radio light from thousands of galaxies to detect them above the background."

This stacking technique allowed researchers to accurately calculate the average amount of hydrogen in galaxies at a certain distance from Earth, corresponding to a particular period in the universe's history. The technique could provide new information that could be used in simulations of the universe's evolution and give clues as to how galaxies formed.

The findings are published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.