🔄From the archive: A radio telescope planned for the farside of the moon could plug a 500-million-year hole in cosmic history.
A massive galaxy cluster is intertwined with threads of dark matter and gas . The formation of large-scale structures seen today are thought to have originated during the universe’s mysterious “dark ages.” This article appeared in the June 2021 issue ofSome 13.8 billion years ago, our universe burst into being. In a fraction of a second, it ballooned from subatomic to the size of a grapefruit.
Before the first stars, the universe didn’t emit visible light, but the primordial matter that pervaded the universe likely did emit radio signals. Astronomers have never seen these wavelengths because they’re so stretched out that they can’t be detected over the radio chatter bouncing around Earth. The farside of the moon is the one place in the inner solar system where radio astronomers can find some peace and quiet.
Burns has now completed a NASA-funded engineering study on a project he calls FARSIDE, or Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets. The entire radio telescope would pack into a robotic lunar lander that would touch down on the farside of the moon. Then, four small rovers would slowly uncoil nearly 30 miles of wire and 128 antennas into a spiral pattern covering some 6 miles.
Astronomers have never observed in this part of the radio spectrum before, and researchers are eager to be the first to see what’s hiding there. It could offer a new test for standard cosmology. And the measurements are so sensitive, they potentially could even detect electromagnetic fields around exoplanets, helping identify habitable planets.
The FARSIDE telescope and its attendant rovers would reach the moon using Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander.
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