Space Quote: The 8 Billion-Year-Old Signal

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia, which detected the 8 billion-year-old signal. (https://www.icrar.org/)

“We were lucky to be looking at that little spot in the sky for that one millisecond after the eight billion years the pulse had travelled to catch it.”

-Statement by Ryan Shannon, an astrophysicist at Australia’s Swinburne University and co-author of a study describing the signal that was received June 10th last year, as quoted by CBS News. The same article noted that “The pulse was so powerful that — in under a millisecond — it released as much energy as the sun emits over 30 years.”