UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., April 7 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The period of rapid galaxy growth in the universe about 10 billion years ago required massive amounts of hydrogen gas, according to astronomers, but they couldn't find it - until now. Using observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), an international team of scientists, including three Penn State researchers, discovered tens of thousands of gigantic hydrogen gas halos that surrounded galaxies in the early universe. The halos, called "Lyman-alpha nebulae," date to an era known as cosmic noon - about 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang - when galaxies were most rapidly increasing in si...