MeerKAT Team Makes First Direct Map of Cosmic Hydrogen’s Large-Scale Structure

An international team called the MeerKLASS collaboration has directly measured cosmic hydrogen’s large-scale structure using South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope.

Cosmic hydrogen was the main material from which stars and galaxies formed, and it remains the most abundant element in the universe.

The team studied radio signals from neutral hydrogen across about 250 square degrees of sky, detecting a signal from 4.5 billion years ago.

That signal is extremely faint, so the researchers used separate dishes and compared maps from different dishes and observing times to reduce interference.

Their results show that cosmic hydrogen traces the cosmic web, the vast pattern of matter that connects galaxies across the universe.

This advances a way to map the universe that could help cosmologists study its large-scale structure.