{"id":757932,"date":"2026-06-24T11:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T11:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/757932\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T11:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T11:14:15","slug":"its-very-exciting-an-astronomer-has-seen-light-from-just-after-the-birth-of-the-universe-now-hes-sharing-it-with-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/757932\/","title":{"rendered":"“It\u2019s very exciting.” An astronomer has seen light from just after the birth of the Universe. Now he’s sharing it with the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve known about the first light to shine through the Universe for some time.<\/p>\n

First detected in 1964, successive space missions have increased the level of detail visible in this cosmic microwave background: COBE in the 1990s, WMAP in the 2000s and Planck in the 2010s.<\/p>\n

Now astronomers have produced the clearest image yet of the earliest light it\u2019s possible to see.<\/p>\n

Travelling for more than 13 billion years, from a time when the cosmos was a mere 380,000 years old, the light captured by the image reveals a time before matter formed into stars and galaxies, when space was filled with clouds of hydrogen and helium.<\/p>\n

We got the chance to speak to Dr Hidde Jense, an astronomer at the Cardiff University in the UK and part of the international science team that produced the image, about how it was created.<\/p>\n

\"Hidde<\/p>\n

Tell us about the image you helped produce. What is it showing and what does it mean to a cosmologist?<\/p>\n

In cosmology, we know that over time the Universe expands<\/a>. That\u2019s a property of space itself.<\/p>\n

If it expands now, it must have been smaller in the past. At one point, it was so small and dense that light couldn\u2019t escape from the plasma filling it.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019ve done is capture an image of the first light that could escape \u2013 we call this the cosmic microwave background<\/a>. We\u2019re literally looking at the very hot early Universe radiating away its heat.<\/p>\n

Today, that appears as faint microwave background radiation.<\/p>\n

More mind-bending science<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Virgil Galaxy, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: ESA\/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. \u00d6stlin, P. G. Perez-Gonzalez, J. Melinder, the JADES Collaboration, M. Zamani (ESA\/Webb)<\/p>\n

The Universe wasn\u2019t perfectly smooth back then \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the same temperature everywhere.<\/p>\n

On average, it\u2019s about three degrees above absolute zero, but there are tiny fluctuations \u2013 about a tenth of a degree.<\/p>\n

By mapping the distribution and size of these fluctuations, we can learn a lot: what\u2019s in the Universe, how old it is, how fast it\u2019s expanding, and even properties of fundamental forces and particles.<\/p>\n

With the Atacama Cosmology Telescope we surveyed the sky for years and created a detailed map of this heat signature from the early Universe.<\/p>\n

I was involved in analysing that data and fitting physical models to it to learn more about gravity, particle physics and the deeper laws of nature.<\/p>\n

\"AA high-definition image of the baby universe. The close-up on the right reveals the direction polarised light is vibrating in, telling us more about the motion of ancient gases pulled by gravity. Credit: ACT Collaboration; ESA\/Planck Collaboration
\nThe Universe is 13.8 billion years old and that light existed 380,000 years after the Big Bang. How is it possible to see something from so long ago?<\/p>\n

Light takes time to travel. So when we look at distant things, we\u2019re seeing them as they were in the past<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nearby galaxies look like our own, but the more distant the galaxy, the younger it appears because the light left it a long time ago.<\/p>\n

When we look as far back as we can, we see a Universe without galaxies \u2013 just clumpy gas.<\/p>\n

Eventually, we reach a point just 300,000 years after the Big Bang where the Universe became transparent.<\/p>\n

Before that, it was so dense that light was trapped. We can\u2019t see any earlier than that with light.<\/p>\n

There are lots of blue and yellow shapes in the image. What are they?<\/p>\n

Those colours represent temperature variations. We measure the temperature of space itself by detecting faint radiation.<\/p>\n

If a point in space is slightly hotter than average, we colour it orange; slightly colder, it\u2019s blue. So all the coloured blotches are tiny temperature fluctuations across the sky.<\/p>\n

There are two bands across the image \u2013 that\u2019s our own Milky Way, which gets in the way and obscures our view.<\/p>\n

Some small points are other galaxies or galaxy clusters, also in the foreground. But most of what we see is the blobby, cloud-like structure of primordial plasma \u2013 the temperature fluctuations of the early Universe.<\/p>\n

\"AA snapshot of the Cosmic Microwave Background – heat left over from the Big Bang – when the Universe was just 380,000 years old, as seen by the Planck Telescope. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of different densities: the seeds that would grow into the stars and galaxies of today. Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration
\nWhat has happened to these temperature fluctuations in the tens of billions of years since?<\/p>\n

Right after the Big Bang, the Universe was incredibly smooth, but quantum mechanics introduced tiny fluctuations.<\/p>\n

A region with slightly more matter has more gravity, so it pulls in more matter and grows. Areas that aren\u2019t so dense, with less gravity, lose matter.<\/p>\n

So these temperature fluctuations also correspond to density fluctuations \u2013 it\u2019s the beginning of the Universe forming a structure.<\/p>\n

Over cosmic time, these fluctuations led to the formation of galaxies, galaxy clusters and the large-scale cosmic web we see today.<\/p>\n

What were the key discoveries of your study?<\/p>\n

The cosmic microwave background is a great tool for testing our cosmological model.<\/p>\n

It reflects the conditions of the Universe depending on things like how much dark matter or regular matter there is, or how fast the Universe is expanding.<\/p>\n

By comparing measurements to predictions, we can determine the Universe\u2019s age, its contents, and even the properties of certain particles.<\/p>\n

This kind of analysis has been done before, but what we\u2019ve done is build a bigger telescope \u2013 which allows more detailed measurements.<\/p>\n

With that, we\u2019ve tightened the constraints on several parameters. For instance, we looked at neutrinos<\/a> \u2013 very light particles that barely interact with anything.<\/p>\n

Particle physics can only give us a lower limit on their mass, but cosmology provides an upper limit.<\/p>\n

With improved data, we can pin down their mass without building new accelerators. It\u2019s a way of learning about physics that’s otherwise hard to access.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationIllustration of the expansion of the Universe. Credit: Mark Garlick \/ Science Photo Library
\nHow does it feel when you see predictions match observations.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely satisfying. You can start with early-Universe data, the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background for example, and predict how galaxies should have formed and clustered over time.<\/p>\n

Then you compare that to what we see in the nearby Universe. If it all lines up \u2013 and it often does \u2013 it confirms that our understanding of gravity, star formation and other processes is on the right track. That\u2019s very rewarding.<\/p>\n

What about the future \u2013 can this research tell us how the Universe might end?<\/p>\n

Physics is about observing past events and predicting what comes next. But in astronomy we can\u2019t do lab experiments \u2013 we can only observe.<\/p>\n

So to know what will happen in a billion years, we\u2019d have to wait a billion years, which isn\u2019t very practical.<\/p>\n

That said, we know the Universe\u2019s expansion is accelerating. Over time, distant galaxies will move away from us so fast that we won\u2019t be able to see them any more.<\/p>\n

Eventually, we could lose sight of the cosmic microwave background entirely. We\u2019re at a special moment in cosmic history where we can still observe it.<\/p>\n

Depending on how dark energy behaves, models suggest the Universe will keep expanding, and while galaxy clusters may stay gravitationally bound, the rest of the Universe will fade away.<\/p>\n

This scenario is called the ‘big chill’ \u2013 the Universe ends up cold, dark and diffuse. But that\u2019s trillions of years away. It\u2019s definitely less dramatic than the birth of the Universe, but kind of fascinating in its own way.<\/p>\n

\"Euclid'sThe Euclid space telescope’s view of a range of different galaxies, including edge-on galaxies, face-on spirals and, on the right, pairs of galaxies colliding. Credit: ESA\/Euclid\/Euclid Consortium\/NASA, image processing by M. Walmsley, M. Huertas-Company, J.-C. Cuillandre<\/p>\n

What\u2019s coming next in your work with the cosmic microwave background?<\/p>\n

The image we discussed was made with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile, which has since been decommissioned.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m now involved with the Simons Observatory, which is a kind of spiritual successor.<\/p>\n

It saw its first light in March 2025, and it\u2019ll map a larger area of the sky with better sensitivity and less noise.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re particularly excited about measuring the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background. When the plasma in the early Universe moved, it polarised the light slightly.<\/p>\n

By mapping that, we can learn even more about conditions at that time \u2013 and possibly even closer to the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

The Simons Observatory will also overlap with other projects, like the Euclid space telescope, which maps galaxy positions.<\/p>\n

By comparing early-Universe data with later-Universe data, we can trace the physics in between. It\u2019s a very exciting time to be working in this field.<\/p>\n

Dr Hidde Jense is an astronomer at Cardiff University researching the cosmic microwave background<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve known about the first light to shine through the Universe for some time. First detected in 1964,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-757932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}