A New Telescope Could Detect Decaying Dark Matter in the Early Universe

A gap in astronomical knowledge is Cosmic Dawn, a time when the first stars in the Universe formed, ending the cosmological dark ages. If there was dark matter at this early time, its decay might have heated up the intergalactic medium, sending out a signal that could be detectable today. A new paper suggests that the newly built Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) telescope could measure this dark matter decay with 1,000 hours of observation or constrain its presence by three orders of ...