{"id":32472,"date":"2023-03-07T11:39:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T00:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/?p=32472"},"modified":"2023-03-07T12:27:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T01:27:42","slug":"tracing-13-billion-years-of-history-by-the-light-of-ancient-quasars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/tracing-13-billion-years-of-history-by-the-light-of-ancient-quasars\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars"},"content":{"rendered":"

New evidence for rapid heating in the early universe<\/h2>\n

Astrophysicists in Australia have shed new light on the state of the universe 13 billion years ago by measuring the density of carbon in the gases surrounding ancient galaxies.<\/p>\n

The study adds another piece to the puzzle of the history of the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found that the fraction of carbon in warm gas increased rapidly about 13 billion years ago, which may be linked to large-scale heating of gas associated with the phenomenon known as the \u2018Epoch of Reionisation\u2019,\u201d says Dr Rebecca Davies, ASTRO 3D Postdoctoral Research Associate at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and lead author of the paper describing the discovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The study shows the amount of warm carbon suddenly increased by a factor of five over a period of only 300 million years \u2013 the blink of an eye in astronomical timescales.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"SmallbBlue<\/span><\/div>\n

While previous studies have suggested a rise in warm carbon, much larger samples \u2013 the basis of the new study \u2013 were needed to provide statistics to accurately measure the rate of this growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019ve done here. And so, we present two potential interpretations of this rapid evolution,\u201d says Dr Davies.<\/p>\n

The first is that there is an initial increase in carbon around galaxies simply because there is more carbon in the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the period when the first stars and galaxies are forming, a lot of heavy elements are forming because we never had carbon before we had stars,\u201d Dr Davies says. \u201cAnd so one possible reason for this rapid rise is just that we\u2019re seeing the products of the first generations of stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the study also found evidence that the amount of cool carbon decreased over the same period. This suggests that there might be two different phases in the evolution of the carbon \u2013 a rapid rise while reionisation occurs, followed by a flattening out.<\/p>\n

The research was a collaboration between: Swinburne University of Technology; the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D); INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste; IFPU-Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Trieste; Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; Max-Planck \u2013 Institut f\u00fcr Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany; the University of California, Riverside; Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP); MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Gemini Observatory and NSF\u2019s NOIRLab, Hawai\u2019i; and the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

The Epoch of Reionisation, which took place when the universe was \u201conly\u201d one billion years old, was when the lights came back on after the cosmic Dark Ages following the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

Before this the universe was a dark, dense fog of gas. But as the first massive stars formed, their light began to shine through space and reionise the cosmos. This light may have led to rapid heating of the surrounding gas, causing the rise in warm carbon observed in this study.<\/p>\n

Studies of reionisation are vital to understand when and how the first stars formed and began producing the elements that exist today. But measurements have been notoriously difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe research led by Dr Davies was built on an exceptional sample of data obtained during 250 hours of observations on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile,\u201d says Dr Valentina D\u2019Odorico from the Italian Institute for Astrophysics, the Principal Investigator of the observational programme. \u201cThis is the largest amount of observing time assigned to a single project carried out with the X-Shooter spectrograph<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to the 8m VLT we could observe some of the most distant quasars, which act as flashlights, illuminating galaxies along the path from the early Universe to the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the quasar light passes through galaxies in its 13-billion-year journey across the universe some photons are absorbed, creating distinctive barcode-like patterns in the light, which can be analysed to determine the chemical composition and temperature of gas in the galaxies.<\/p>\n

This gives an historical picture of the development of the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese \u2018barcodes\u2019 are captured by detectors at the VLT\u2019s X-Shooter spectrograph,\u201d Dr Davies explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis instrument splits the galaxy light into different wavelengths, like putting light through a prism, allowing us to read the barcodes and measure the properties of each galaxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study led by Dr Davies captured more barcodes of ancient galaxies than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe increased from 12 to 42 the number of quasars for which we had high quality data, finally allowing a detailed and accurate measurement of the evolution of the carbon density,\u201d says Dr D\u2019Odorico.<\/p>\n

This major advance was enabled by the ESO VLT, one of the most advanced telescopes on Earth, and a strategic partner of Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study provides a legacy data set which will not be significantly improved until 30m-class telescopes comes online towards the end of this decade,\u201d says Professor Emma Ryan-Weber, a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and second author of the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh quality data from even earlier in the Universe will require access to telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) now under construction in Chile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astronomers are using many different types of data to build a history of the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur results are consistent with recent studies showing that the amount of neutral hydrogen in intergalactic space decreases rapidly around the same time,\u201d says Dr Davies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research also paves the way for future investigations with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which aims to directly detect emission from neutral hydrogen during this key phase of the universe\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Ryan-Weber says the research goes to the heart of ASTRO 3D\u2019s mission to understand the evolution of elements, from the Big Bang to present day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt addresses this key goal: how did the building blocks of life \u2013 in this case carbon \u2013 proliferate across the universe?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs humans we strive to understand \u2018where did we come from?\u2019 It\u2019s incredible to think that the barcode of those 13-billion-year-old carbon atoms were imprinted on photons at a time when the Earth didn\u2019t even exist. Those photons travelled across the universe, into the VLT, and then were used to develop a picture of the evolution of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":32473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[210],"class_list":["post-32472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars - ASTRO 3D<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/astro3d.org.au\/tracing-13-billion-years-of-history-by-the-light-of-ancient-quasars\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars - 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