Listening for the cosmic ‘dark ages,’ from the lunar far side
4/23/202613 min
What did the universe look like before any stars turned on? Astronomers call that time the “dark ages,” and while they think it may be possible to see remnants of it in very low frequency radio signals, hearing those signals from Earth can be challenging.
One possibility is to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, where it would have periods of observation shielded from interference both from Earth and from the sun—and potentially be able to receive that dark ages signal. The LuSEE-Night mission will explore that approach. A small demonstration radio telescope is slated for launch in late 2026 to serve as a proof of concept for low frequency radio astronomy on the lunar far side.
Astronomer Anže Slosar, lead scientist for LuSEE-Night, joins Host Ira Flatow to describe the telescope project and what astronomers hope to achieve by sending it to the moon.
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Guests:
Dr. Anže Slosar is science lead for the LuSEE-Night project. He’s based at Brookhaven National Lab.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Ira Flatow· Host0:59
[upbeat music] Hi, I'm Ira Flatow, and you're listening to Science Friday. In early April, all eyes were on the moon, right, with the lunar flyby of the Artemis space mission, and they got an unprecedented view of the lunar far side. But researchers are working to put eyes on the far side of the moon in another way, by delivering a tiny radio telescope there. It's called LuSEE-Night, and joining me to talk about it