Unravelling the 'Dark Ages' of our universe from far side of the moon

What do you know about the "Dark Ages" of the universe? Scientists are now trying to peer into the universe's ancient past by using the moon as a platform. They are preparing to place a small radio telescope on the far side of the moon which will help them learn more about the universe's ancient past, or what they are calling the "Dark Ages".

What are the Dark Ages?

Our universe's Dark Ages can be traced back to between about 400,000 and 400 million years after the Big Bang happened. This was when the stars and galaxies had not fully formed. Till now, a benchmark called the cosmic microwave background was being used to know more about the earlier stages of the universe. But now scientists are set to reach the far side of the moon to catch faint radio waves from the Dark Ages.

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Using LuSEE-Night to catch signals from the universe's ancient past

Scientists are gearing up to send a Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night) to the moon in the next few years. The LuSEE-Night is a pathfinder being jointly developed by US Department of Energy's Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, the Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The LuSEE-Night is currently scheduled for a late 2025 launch on a private robotic lunar lander. It will touch down on the far side of the moon from where it will try to grab signals and faint radio waves from the universe's Dark Ages using onboard antennas, radio receivers and a spectrometer.

"So far, we can only make predictions about earlier stages of the universe using a benchmark called the cosmic microwave background. The Dark Ages Signal would provide a new benchmark," Brookhaven physicist Anže Slosar said in a statement. "And if predictions based on each benchmark don't match, that means we've discovered new physics."

But LuSEE-Night will just be the first step in a larger mission since a pathfinder cannot gather all relevant data by itself. The whole mission in itself might end up answering bigger cosmic questions such as, what is the nature of dark energy and more about the creation of the universe, the scientists said.

Why the far side of the moon?

Scientists explain that the far side of the moon offers the best environment to study such signals and radio waves because of the unimaginable silence it offers. Earth has an extremely noisy environment due to the constant radio signals emanating from satellites. However, the far side of the moon, while being quiet, also presents several challenges.

The far side of the moon faces away from us in the night sky. The temperature here fluctuates between 121 and minus 173 degree Celsius. It also has a day/night cycle, with each phase lasting 14 days. So LuSEE-Night will have to be designed keeping all this in mind. It needs to withstand the non-stop lunar-day sun and be able to stay powered for two weeks when it will be just cold darkness on the far side.

(With inputs from agencies)

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