Researchers prepare rocket for launch
A team of RIT researchers is helping launch an experiment above the atmosphere to better understand extragalactic background light, which traces the history of galaxies back to the formation of the first stars in the universe.
“We’re trying to understand the fluctuations in the background light at infrared wavelengths,” said Michael Zemcov, assistant professor of physics and a member of RIT’s Future Photon Initiative and Center for Detectors. “We want to know if there is matter or sources of light in between galaxies that we can’t find in the ways we’ve been using up to now.”
The experiment leverages an observational technique called intensity mapping used to study the structure of the universe.