{"id":11497,"date":"2025-08-12T09:50:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T13:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/?p=11497"},"modified":"2026-06-29T13:09:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T17:09:20","slug":"nasa-records-13-billion-year-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/nasa-records-13-billion-year-signal\/11497\/","title":{"rendered":"13 billion years into the past: NASA captures polarized light from the universe’s first stars using ground-based telescopes in Chile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking into the cosmos is like taking a peek into the past of the universe<\/strong>. Everything that NASA and other space agencies observe, which is thousands, millions, or even billions of light-years away,<\/span> has already happened – but we on Earth are only seeing it now<\/em> because light takes time to travel to our planet. This means we are always late for the breaking news of the universe. On the other hand, light eventually catches up to us, revealing new cosmic objects and showing that what we know about the cosmos is still just a small portion of it.<\/p>\n

NASA looked into the past to find the 13\u2011billion\u2011year signal: relativity is for everybody<\/h2>\n

To make this visually appealing, here’s an example: if humans could take a telescope to a star 64 million light-years away, and the light from Earth reached that spot, we would be able to see our planet as it was back then. Prehistoric creatures, ancient vegetation, microbiological life – everything. So, the relativity effect is not exclusive to people on Earth; it happens everywhere in the universe.<\/p>\n

Now, as NASA continues developing more powerful tools, scientists are sending telescopes into space, rovers to Mars, and probes to distant regions. They are also investing in steady telescopes on Earth to assist in discoveries – and also make its own. Recently, they used one of the telescopes located at the top of the Andes in Chile, in the Atacama Desert, to search for the fingerprints of the first light<\/strong> to ever exist in the universe.<\/p>\n

New signal found at<\/span> the beginning<\/span> of the universe: the region faint, but we can still see<\/span><\/h2>\n

NASA have recently managed to peer over 13 billion years into the past by capturing one of the faintest signals in the universe \u2014 the light that carries the imprint of the very first stars. Using ground-based telescopes high in the Andes, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, researchers have taken a major step toward decoding what happened during the so-called “cosmic dawn” \u2014 a period when the universe lit up for the first time.<\/p>\n

This early light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), is already faint \u2014 but the version analyzed here is even subtler. It’s polarized, meaning the light waves have been scattered in specific directions<\/strong> after bumping into particles. Measuring this from Earth is notoriously difficult, as radio signals, satellite interference, and even the weather can distort or drown out the signal entirely.<\/p>\n

Scientists didn’t think it was possible until they used the right type of telescope<\/h2>\n

Despite these challenges, the CLASS project (Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor), backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation and led by scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago, was able to detect it. The team used specially designed telescopes to identify the subtle “fingerprints” left by the universe’s first stars in the background light of the Big Bang<\/a>. Tobias Marriage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins and project leader, emphasized that this kind of measurement was long thought to be impossible from the ground<\/a> due to the sensitivity required.<\/p>\n

Scientists isolated the signal using the newest tools in Chile for searching the cosmos<\/h3>\n

NASA also used comparisons between the CLASS telescope data and information gathered from Planck and WMAP to narrow down interference and identify a consistent signal. Yunyang Li, who worked on the study as a PhD student and later as a fellow at the University of Chicago, explained that polarized light behaves similarly to glare bouncing off a car hood. Just like polarized sunglasses. The other powerful telescope is also located in Chile’s desert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking into the cosmos is like taking a peek into the past of the universe. Everything that NASA and other space agencies observe, which is thousands, millions, or even billions of light-years away, has already happened – but we on Earth are only seeing it now because light takes time to travel to our planet. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":11498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"NASA","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"NASA was founded to search for news in the depths of the cosmos - and they couldn't get any farther than the first light that emerged after the big expansion.","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}