Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Physicists in Earth’s remotest corners race to reproduce ‘cosmic dawn’ signal

Teams rush to capture faint radiation from Universe’s first stars, while theorists seek to explain puzzling observations.
  1. Davide Castelvecchi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Long Wavelength Array at Owen’s Valley, California

The Owens Valley Radio Observatory in California hosts the LEDA experiment, one ofmany trying to probe the first few hundred million years of cosmic history. Credit: Danny C. Price

Researchers are heading to some of the most remote spots on Earth — from the Tibetan Plateau to an island in the sub-Antarctic ocean — to try to capture an enigmatic radio signal from the early Universe. This grand search, which could even involve a mission to the Moon, includes some of the first experiments to follow up on a surprise announcement in February that astronomers had seen evidence of the Universe’s first stars lighting up1, a moment known as the cosmic dawn.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 557, 15-16 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04966-9

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 02 May 2018: An earlier version of the caption for the first image implied that the picture is of the LEDA experiment. In fact, it is the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array, which hosts the experiment.

References

  1. Bowman, J. D., Rogers, A. E. E., Monsalve, R. A., Mozdzen, T. J. & Mahesh, N. Nature 555, 67–70 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Barkana, R. Nature 555, 71–74 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. McGaugh, S. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.02365 (2018).

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links