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RADIO ASTRONOMY

From a small antenna to cosmic dawn

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 887–888 (2022)Cite this article

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Conflicting results in measurements of the global spectrum of the hydrogen 21-cm line may indicate that there are large systematic errors. A different experimental approach to reach the redshifted signal from cosmic dawn assesses possible systematic errors together with the signal.

The first stars and galaxies formed about a hundred million years after the Big Bang, or so the standard cosmological model predicts. Observing these earliest stars and galaxies are listed as the top goals of the largest, most advanced and expensive telescopes, such as the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the current generation of ground-based optical telescopes under construction — including the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and the upcoming Square Kilometer Array (SKA). Yet some radio astronomers are attempting to peek into the era when the first stars and galaxies formed or even prior to that — periods known as ‘cosmic dawn’ and ‘dark ages’, respectively — by using a deceptively simple device: a small antenna. In Nature Astronomy, Eloy de Lera Acedo and co-workers present the Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH) experiment1, a potentially ground-breaking experimental effort in this direction.

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Fig. 1: Cosmic timeline.

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  1. National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xuelei Chen

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  1. Xuelei Chen
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Correspondence to Xuelei Chen.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Chen, X. From a small antenna to cosmic dawn. Nat Astron 6, 887–888 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01724-w

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