The excitement over 2018 claims of discovery of light from the universe’s first stars (cosmic dawn) seems to have hit a roadblock in Bengaluru. City-based Raman Research Institute on Monday claimed their experiments have refuted claims by Arizona State University (ASU) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that they discovered the elusive radio signals from the cosmic dawn. The findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday night, which had also published the earlier claims of discovery in 2018.
The elusive radio signal is a theoretical prediction of a dip in the brightness of the spectrum due to the interaction of hydrogen gas and Cosmic Microwave Background radiation at different temperatures at cosmic dawn. For decades now, scientists have been experimentally trying to observe and capture this signal, to hopefully reverse engineer and study the formation of the first stars after the big bang, a phase about which very little is known.
ASU and MIT, using data from their EDGES radio telescope mounted in Western Australia, claimed to have finally discovered the elusive signal in February 2018. However, the observed dip was twice over what was theoretically predicted, disrupting the widely accepted cosmological model of the universe. Hailed by many as revolutionary, this claim led to several new theories like early galaxies before cosmic dawn and dark matter interactions in an attempt to explain this variation. Since then, over 10 experiments across the world have been trying to cross verify this discovery.
