Two cosmic magnifying glasses are giving astronomers a glimpse of some extremely faint galaxies that existed as far back as 600 million years after the Big Bang (13.8 billion years ago). Such views suggest that tiny galaxies in the early universe played a crucial role in cosmic reionization — when ultraviolet radiation stripped electrons from hydrogen atoms in the cosmos.
“That we detected galaxies as faint as we did supports the idea that a lot of little galaxies reionized the early universe and that these galaxies may have played a bigger role in reionization than we thought,” says Rachael Livermore, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. She and colleagues report the results in the Feb. 1 Astrophysical Journal.