Telescopes on Far Side of the Moon Could Illuminate the Cosmic Dark Ages

Scientific American shares how these new telescopes can give us a better understanding of the early universe.

These instruments will study the universe’s initial half-billion years—the first few hundred million or so of which make up the so-called cosmic “dark ages,” when stars and galaxies had yet to form. Bereft of starlight, this era is invisible to optical observations. Radio telescopes, however, can tune in to long-wavelength, low-frequency radio emissions produced by the gigantic clouds of neutral hydrogen that then filled the universe. But these emissions are difficult, if not downright impossible, to detect from Earth because they are either blocked or distorted by our planet’s atmosphere or swamped by human-generated radio noise.

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