In 2016, scientists detected a radio signal from a source 5 billion light-years away.

 

In 2016, scientists detected a radio signal from a source 5 billion light-years away.

This means that when the signal started its journey, Earth didn’t even exist.

The detected signals were located using the Very Large Array (VLA) of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico.

Six dishes of the telescope, located in a remote desert in Western Australia at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), have detected a weak signal emitted prior to the birth of the solar system.

 

James Allison of Australia's national science agency's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) led a research team using ASKAP and MRO's unique radio quietness to crack open a window to a little-explored period of the universe's history.