Researchers detected ancient light from the depths of the universe and may be one step closer to detecting primordial light from only fractions of a second after the Big Bang.
The light, called B-modes, was spotted for the first time with the National Science Foundation's South Pole Telescope, a NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory news release reported.
Researchers believe there are two types of B-modes; some were generated only a few billion years into our 13.8 billion years old universe's existence, others when the universe was only a "newborn baby" (primordial). The team was able to observe the younger B-modes.
"This latest discovery is a good checkpoint on our way to the measurement of primordial B-modes," Duncan Hanson of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, lead author of the new report, said.
Scientists are itching to see these primordial B-modes because they could reveal secrets of the birth of our universe. The oldest light we have been able to see so far is called the cosmic microwave background, and is from only hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang.
"A fraction of this ancient light is polarized, a process that causes light waves to vibrate in the same plane. The same phenomenon occurs when sunlight reflects off lakes, or particles in our atmosphere. On Earth, special sunglasses can isolate this polarized light, reducing glare," the news release reported.
The light is twisted because of the pull of matter as it traveled millions of years to reach human detection.
Since the light was fairly faint, researchers used Herschel's infrared map of matter to figure out where they would have the best chance of seeing the phenomenon. The discovery could help us map out both light and dark matter throughout the galaxy.
"These beautiful measurements from the South Pole Telescope and Herschel strengthen our confidence in our current model of the universe," Olivier Doré, a member of the U.S. Planck science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said. "However, this model does not tell us how big the primordial signal itself should be. We are thus really exploring with excitement a new territory here, and a potentially very, very old one."
