‘Nuisance’ Data Lead to Surprising Star-Birth Discovery
When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance.
The light sources interfered with efforts to measure more precisely the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the big bang. But the astronomers soon realized that they had made a rare find in South Pole Telescope’s large survey of the sky. The spectra of some of the bright objects, which is the rainbow of light they emit, were inconsistent with what astronomers expected from the well-known population of radio galaxies. (more…)