Astronomers using CHIME map hydrogen eight billion light years away

Science

The Globe and Mail

Using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) in Penticton, British Columbia, astronomers detected diffuse radio emission from hydrogen about eight billion light years away, the most distant such measurement to date. The team used trough-like antennas and a powerful computing backend to disentangle signals, and after filtering 2,000 days of data down to 94 interference-free days they extracted a hydrogen clustering signal that agrees with other large-scale structure maps. The detection, published in the Astrophysical Journal, may allow future direct measurements of the universe's expansion rate and offer an independent probe of dark energy.

CHIME detected hydrogen structure about eight billion light years away.