Starship Asterisk*

Astronomers investigating why the cosmic background radiation is much brighter at radio wavelengths than expected have identified a potential culprit: fast spinning black holes early in the galaxy formation process. The results will be presented by Professor Andy Lawrence at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow on Wednesday 14th April.

Last July, US astronomers announced surprising results from a high-altitude balloon experiment called ARCADE-2, which had made careful measurements of the sky at radio wavelengths. The background radio emission, which is the component smoothly distributed across the whole sky, was several times brighter than anyone was expecting.

Now a team of astronomers from California and Scotland, including Jack Singal, Lukasz Stawarz, and Vahe Petrosian of Stanford University, and Andy Lawrence of the University of Edinburgh, believe that they have an explanation for this surprise.