The Canadian CHIME radio telescope has detected, using its own data alone, the radio emission of hydrogen from when the universe was about five billion years old, the University of British Columbia (UBC) announced on 28 September. Until now, its measurements had to be cross-referenced with galaxy surveys carried out by other telescopes. The study, published the same day in The Astrophysical Journal, is based on 94 nights of observations from 2019 and reaches a statistical significance of more than 12 sigma. According to the team, about 2% of the hydrogen in the universe was then in neutral atomic form.
Located near Penticton, British Columbia, CHIME has built up nearly seven years of observations. The researchers now want to go back to the era when the universe was only three billion years old, opening the way to new studies of cosmic expansion and dark energy.
Sources
- Université de la Colombie-Britannique (UBC), faculté des sciences, Canadian telescope directly maps earliest glow of hydrogen, opening a new window on the universe, 28 Sept 2026 (primary source)
- The Astrophysical Journal (CHIME Collaboration), Detection of the Cosmological 21 cm Signal in Autocorrelation at z ∼ 1 with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, 28 Sept 2026 (primary source)
- arXiv (CHIME Collaboration), Detection of the Cosmological 21 cm Signal in Auto-correlation at z ~ 1 with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, 26 Mar 2026
- Université McGill, Le nouveau télescope canadien tracera la carte du plus imposant volume d'espace jamais étudié, 7 Sept 2017
Image and video credits
- The CHIME radio telescope, photographed in August 2019 near Penticton (British Columbia).: Z22, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
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Method: at least 3 sources including the official one, cross-checked with the help of an AI (Claude), checked and approved by a human on 29 Sept 2026 in the French original; this English version is an AI translation. Our method
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