Mercer Times

New images of the universe's infancy have been released by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration. These images provide a clearer view of the universe when it was about 380,000 years old. The findings will be presented at the American Physical Society annual conference.

Suzanne Staggs, director of ACT and Henry deWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University, stated, "We are seeing the first steps towards making the earliest stars and galaxies." She emphasized that they are not only observing light and dark but also high-resolution polarization of light.

The new images offer higher definition than those captured by the Planck space-based telescope over a decade ago. Sigurd Naess from the University of Oslo noted, "ACT has five times the resolution of Planck, and greater sensitivity," allowing for direct visibility of faint polarization signals.

These images reveal detailed movements of hydrogen and helium gas in cosmic infancy. Staggs explained that this movement indicates how gravity's pull varied across different parts of space.

Jo Dunkley, Joseph Henry Professor of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, highlighted how these images help scientists understand the universe's origins: "By looking back to that time when things were much simpler, we can piece together the story of how our universe evolved."

Erminia Calabrese from Cardiff University provided insights into mass distribution in the observable universe: "We've measured more precisely that the observable universe extends almost 50 billion light-years in all directions from us and contains as much mass as 1,900 'zetta-suns.'"

David Spergel from Princeton University remarked on testing cosmology models: "Our standard model of cosmology has just undergone its most stringent set of tests... We have tested it for new physics in many different ways and don’t see evidence for any novelties."

Lyman Page praised ACT's achievements: “Through their sweeping breadth, depth and attention to detail, the latest ACT results are a testament to...the power of CMB measurements to probe everything from the birth of the universe to stellar outbursts.”

The ACT project operated in Chile until 2022 under an agreement with the University of Chile. It is supported by several institutions including Princeton University and funded by entities such as the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Images and articles related to this research will appear on arXiv.org and have been submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Lead authors include Zachary Atkins (Princeton University), Yilun Guan (University of Toronto), Hidde Jense (Cardiff University), Adrien La Posta (University of Oxford), Matthew Hasselfield (Flatiron Institute), and Yuhan Wang (Cornell University).