‘First Light of the Cosmos’ –A Signal from an Epic Turning Point in the Universe
Astronomers have detected light from the oldest gas clouds that formed around 13 billion years ago when the universe emerged from a great cosmic dark age as the first stars and galaxies lit up. The new Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope --an array of 350 antennas situated next to MeerKAT in the Northern Cape province of South Africa--has released its first set of observations to the world, giving astronomers a glimpse of what the universe looked like 13 billion years ago using radio astronomy.