Dhaka, Sept. 9 -- Astronomers have directly detected an extremely faint radio signal from hydrogen gas billions of light-years away, marking an important step toward using hydrogen to map the large-scale structure of the Universe.

An international research team led by scientists from the University of Manchester and the University of the Western Cape used South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope to detect emissions from neutral hydrogen dating back to a time when the Universe was several billion years younger than it is today.

The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, demonstrate the potential of hydrogen intensity mapping, a technique that could allow scientists to survey vast regions of space without having to identi...