A strange electromagnetic wave signal booming far louder than other known radio signals has been detected emitting from deep space. Announced by NASA researcher Alan Kogut and colleagues at the January 2009 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the noise poses important new questions about the origins of the universe.Space.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009)
Noises in Space
The noise was detected by ARCADE (Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission), a balloon-borne instrument circling 120,000 feet above planet Earth. ARCADE, launched in 2006, is intended to search the sky for traces of heat being transmitted from deep space, specifically information about the origins of the cosmos. The loud noise is hindering ARCADE from its search.NASA: NASA Balloon Mission Tunes in to a Cosmic Radio Mystery (January 12, 2009) NASA: NASA Balloon Mission Tunes in to a Cosmic Radio Mystery (January 12, 2009)
Many objects emit radio waves, including the Milky Way, which makes a noise astronomers describe as a static hiss. The newly detected signal is far louder than astronomers would expect from a distant space entity.Space.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009)
The source and distance of the noise is unknown, but it is clear that it has traveled from many thousands of light-years away, and thus comes from an earlier time in the universe. Researchers hope that studying the noise will teach them about the generation of stars.Space.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009) ARCADE is the first instrument sensitive enough to discover the noise; but new examination of earlier radio wave studies seems to suggest that the static noise registered at the time, but could not be detected.NASA: NASA Balloon Mission Tunes in to a Cosmic Radio Mystery (January 12, 2009) Science News: Tuned in to new noise from the cosmos (January 8, 2009)
NASA researchers and other attendees at the conference suggested that noise might be signals from the first super-massive black holes, or echoes from the first generation of stars.Science News: Tuned in to new noise from the cosmos (January 8, 2009)
References
Fast Facts
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Funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate, under the Astronomy and Physics Research and Analysis Suborbital Investigation programARCADE: Official NASA Home Page
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Primordial stars and other known radio sources ruled out as the causesSpace.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009)
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Sound is six times louder than the combined emission of all known sources in the universeSpace.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009)
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Finding announced at the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California in January 2009Space.com: Mystery Roar from Faraway Space Detected (January 7, 2009)
