Hydrogen detected in distant galaxy

​London: A team of international scientists have detected a signal emitted by hydrogen gas more than five billion light years away. The team observed radio emission using the Very Large Array radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the US and noted that the galaxy would have contained billions of young, massive stars surrounded by clouds of hydrogen gas.

Hydrogen gas is used by astronomers to detect and understand the makeup of galaxies. However, until now they have only been able to detect nearby galaxies. "Due to the upgrade of the Very Large Array, this is the first time we've been able to directly measure atomic hydrogen in a galaxy this far from Earth," said lead author, Dr Ximena Fernández from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

"These signals would have begun their journey before our planet even existed, and after five billion years of travelling through space without hitting anything, they've fallen into the telescope and allowed us to see this distant galaxy for the very first time,” he added.

Professor Andreas Wicenec, head of the Data Intensive Astronomy team at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said the limiting factor for radio astronomers used to be the size of the telescope and the hardware behind it.

"It's fast becoming more about the data and how you move, store and analyse vast volumes of information," he said in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.