High-Definition Images Give Us Earliest Look at Birth of the Universe
New findings from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration may have just unveiled the sharpest images of the universe as an infant. After measuring light that traveled 13 billion light years to Earth, the images reveal the universe at about 380,000 years old — the equivalent of an image of a human baby only mere hours old.
The new findings come from several international pre-peer-reviewed studies, set to be presented later in March 2025. According to the study researchers, this view of the universe is the earliest cosmic time currently available to humans.
Atacama Cosmology Telescope’s High-Res Images
The ATC resides high in the Chilean Andes, and in 2022, the telescope collected it’s final data before it was decommissioned. However, as researchers look through some of this data, they’re seeing incredible images of the past.
“We are seeing the first steps towards making the earliest stars and galaxies,” said Suzanne Staggs, director of ACT and Henry deWolf Smyth professor of physics at Princeton University, in a press release. “And we’re not just seeing light and dark, we’re seeing the polarization of light in high resolution. That is a defining factor distinguishing ACT from Planck and other, earlier telescopes.”
According to the research team, the images from ACT add a higher resolution compared to telescopes in the past. From the ACT, the research team can now determine the movement of hydrogen and helium gasses during the universe’s infancy.
Aging the Universe
Research by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration has led to the clearest and most precise images yet of the universe’s infancy, the cosmic microwave background radiation that was visible only 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
This new sky map has put the standard model of cosmology through a rigorous new set of tests and show it to be remarkably robust. The new images of the early universe, which show both the intensity and polarization of the earliest light with unprecedented clarity, reveal the formation of ancient, consolidating clouds of hydrogen and helium that later developed into the first galaxies and stars.
This piece of the new sky map that shows the vibration directions (or polarization) of the radiation. The zoom-in on the right is 10 degrees high. Polarized light vibrates in a particular direction; blue shows where the surrounding light’s vibration directions are angled towards it, like spokes on a bicycle; orange shows places where the vibration directions circle around it. This new information reveals the motion of the ancient gases in the universe when it was less than half a million years old, pulled by the force of gravity in the first step towards forming galaxies. The red band comes from our closer-by Milky Way.
(Image Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA/Planck Collaboration)
According to the researchers, the images from ACT capture a much clearer view of the universe’s Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the cooled remnants of the first light that traveled freely across the universe after the Big Bang.
From these images, the team noted the subtle differences in the density and velocity of the gases when the universe was young. These details can help researchers to better understand what the universe was like during its origins.
“By looking back to that time when things were much simpler, we can piece together the story of how our universe evolved to the rich and complex place we find ourselves in today, ” said Jo Dunkley, the Joseph Henry professor of physics and astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and the ACT analysis leader in a press release.
The data the ACT collected has helped researchers narrow in on the actual age of the universe and determine when certain elements were created. One of the study authors notes that all of the helium in the universe was created in the first three minutes of cosmic time. Another states that the universe stretches on for 50 billion light years in each direction. According to the study authors, the ACT shows that the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
What the ACT Can Still Tell Us
For the ACT to retrieve this data, it needed to collect it for five years because the CMB radiation was so faint.
“To make this new measurement, we needed a 5-year exposure with a sensitive telescope tuned to see millimeter-wavelength light,” said Mark Devlin, the Reese W. Flower professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, and ACT’s deputy director, in a press release. “Our colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided detectors with cutting-edge sensitivity, and the National Science Foundation supported ACT’s mission for more than two decades to get us here.”
The early universe isn’t the only light the ACT captured.
“We can see right back through cosmic history,” Dunkley said in a press release, “from our own Milky Way, out past distant galaxies hosting vast black holes, and huge galaxy clusters, all the way to that time of infancy.”
Though the ACT is no longer collecting data, there is still so much more it can tell us. These studies have yet to go through peer review, but they already contain a wealth of knowledge that can help us understand the universe.
Article Sources
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A graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who.