REACH
Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen
The "Live" radio sky observed by REACH!
Click the image above to see a plot of the current sky being observed by REACH
Science
How did the Universe evolve from dark and simple after the Big Bang to the complex realm of celestial lights we see today? Discover the amazing things REACH aims to discover about the most fundamental transformation in the history of the Universe.
Technology
The REACH team has developed over the years a bespoke radiometer design able to deliver the exquisitely precise and accurate calibration required. Learn more in this section.
Methods
REACH focuses on explaining the systematic signals posing a challenge in the detection of the 21-cm line from Cosmic Hydrogen. To that aim, we develop our own, statistically rich, physics-motivated models and methods for the data analysis.
A time machine for the cost of a nice car
The cost of the hardware for the first antenna system was less than 60,000£... you can find more expensive cars than that, but they can not take you back to the beginning of time...
The scale of the problem
Finding the tiny 21-cm signal underneath the other large noise signals in the data (e.g. the galactic synchrotron emission) is equivalent to measuring the weight of a bee when both the bee and an elephant are in the scale together...
How far are we looking?
REACH is trying to study the formation of the very first stars in a mostly empty Universe, which should have taken place ~ 13,700,000,000 years ago. Accounting for the expansion of the Universe, this means that those stars (if they were to still exist) would be ~270,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away.
News
Read all about it! We will be posting our discoveries in this area.