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MIT Physics Lecture Series:b Looking for the First Stars with a New Radio Telescope
Professor Jacqueline Hewitt
Fri Jan 20, 01:30-02:30pm, 6-120
No enrollment limit, no advance sign up
Single session event
Prereq: None
The most distant structures astronomers observe are those encoded in the Cosmic Microwave Background, tracing primordial density fluctuations that later collapse to form the first stars and galaxies. Before the first stars formed, the universe consisted mainly of dark matter and hydrogen gas. Neutral hydrogen gas emits and absorbs radio waves at a characteristic frequency of 1.4 GHz, which in the first stars should be redshifted to a frequency of about 100 MHz. Radio astronomers, including some of us at MIT, are building a novel low-frequency radio telescope in Western Australia to search for hydrogen signals from the first stars.
Contact: Denise Wahkor, 4-315, 253-4855, denisew@mit.edu
Sponsor: Physics
Latest update: 09-Dec-2011
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