Explosion of galaxy formation lit up early universe

From the South Pole Telescope specify that the birth of the first massive galaxies that lit up the early universe was an explosive event, happening faster and sooner than suspected ending.

Extremely bright, active galaxies and fully illuminated formed the universe by the time it was 750 million years old, or about 13 billion years ago, According to Oliver Zahn, a postdoctoral fellow at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics (BCCP) at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the data analysis.

The data Provide new constraints on the universe's first era of galaxy formation, called the Epoch of Reionization. Most astronomers think that early stars came to life in massive gas clouds, generating the first galaxies. The energetic light pumped out by these stars is thought To Have ionized the hydrogen gas in and around the galaxies, creating "bubbles ionization" millions of light years across that left a lasting, telltale signature in the cosmic background radiation (CMB). This relic light from the early universe today is visible everywhere in the sky and was first mapped by UC Berkeley physicist and Nobel laureate George Smoot, founder of the BCCP.

"We find the Epoch of Reionization That Lasted less than 500 million years and Began When the universe was at least 250 million years old," Zahn said. "Before this measurement, scientists’ reionization believed that lasted 750 million years or longer, and had no evidence as to when to reionization began."

The first epoch of ionization occurred after the universe was born in the Big Bang. Everything was so hot That All the gas, mostly hydrogen, was ionized. The universe cooled enough for electrons only to latch onto protons to form neutral hydrogen atoms acerca when the universe was 400.000 years old.

"Studying the Epoch of Reionization is Important Because It Represents one of the few ways by Which We can study the first stars and galaxies," said study co-author John Carlstrom of the University of Chicago.

The epoch's short duration Also Suggests That monster galaxies with More than a billion stars played a key role in the reionization, since smaller galaxies Would Have Formed much earlier.

Zahn and UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Christian Reichardt, along with colleagues at the University of Chicago, Which Operates the telescope, will report in the September Their Findings.

South Pole Telescope

The latest results are based on a new analysis combine measurements taken that by the South Pole Telescope at three frequencies and extends these measurements to a larger area covering approximately 2 percent of the sky. The 10-meter South Pole Telescope at millimeter wavelengths Operates to make high-resolution images of the cosmic microwave background and its polarization.

When the new data combined with Were Earlier data from the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite, Zahn, Reichardt and Their colleagues Were Able to put stringent constraints on the epoch of reionization When Began, and how long it lasted.

"Our data mostly tells you the duration of the Epoch of Reionization, while WMAP mostly tells you when, on average, it happened, so together both tell you the evolution of ionization over time," Zahn said.

Zahn astronomers Said That They Were unsure Would Be Able Whether to constrain the Epoch of Reionization using the cosmic background radiation, Because of uncertainty over how stars Formed, ionizing radiation clustered and spewed into the interstellar medium in the early universe. But over the past decade, various groups, one at Harvard University Including Zahn That belonged to as a graduate student, Developed models of These Processes, and Zahn has used them to work backward to put limits on when the era began and ended.

"In Their study of the epoch of reionization, People Have Been Focused on the spectra of distant quasars and galaxies," said Zahn. "Now the CMB is adding a wealth of information to this field."

This is only the beginning of what astronomers expect to Learn About reionization from the South Pole Telescope, Reichardt said. The current results are based on only the first third of the full survey telescope. Additionally, work is underway to combine the telescope's Maps With Ones Made with the Herschel satellite to Further Increase the sensitivity to the reionization signal.

"We expect to measure the duration of reionization to less than 50 million Years with the current survey," Reichardt said. "With planned upgrades to the instrument, we hope to Further Improve this even in the next five years."

The 75-foot-tall South Pole Telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica was specifically designed to detect signals of reionization in the Cosmic Microwave Background, and allow astronomers to measure the Extent of the partially ionized phase. The signal came from cosmic background radiation interacting with electrons in the ionization bubbles, which created small hot and cold spots in the CMB based on whether a bubble was moving toward or away from us.

The South Pole Telescope collaboration is led by the University of Chicago and includes research groups at Argonne National Laboratory, Cardiff University, Case Western Reserve University, Harvard University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, McGill University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, University of Colorado at Boulder and University of Michigan, as well as at several other scientists Individual institutions.

The South Pole Telescope is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs. Partial support is provided by the NSF Also-funded Physics Frontier Center of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Kavli Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.