Shocking! We can see our past, Indian scientists made a big discovery

One can now glimpse the galaxy that existed millions and billions of years ago thanks to a recent discovery related to detecting radio signals emitted by neutral atomic hydrogen gas, informed Director at National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), Pune Yashwant Gupta. 

“We made a new discovery related to detecting radio signals emitted by neutral atomic hydrogen gas from distant galaxies in the universe,” he said. 

“With this, one can see the galaxy that existed millions and billions of years ago.  It will enable one to look back in time. It allows us to reconstruct the history of the universe,” Gupta added. 

Insights of discovery

The astronomical distance at which the signal was detected is the farthest ever detected. This was the first confirmed strong lensing of 21 cm emission from a galaxy.

NCRA Center Director Yashwant Gupta further said the detection of neutral hydrogen in emissions from the distant universe is extremely challenging and has been one of the major science goals of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). 

We are delighted with this new pioneering result with GMRT and hope that it can be confirmed and improved upon in the future. The Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope is built and operated by NCRA-TIFR. The research was funded by McGill and IISc.

All these findings have also been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Using the GMRT data, Arnab Chakraborty, a postdoctoral researcher at the Trottier Space Institute and Department of Physics, McGill University, and Nirupam Roy, associate professor in the Department of Physics, IISc, detected a radio signal from atomic hydrogen in the Milky Way at redshift z = 1.29.