A Purdue professor is leading a team that’s discovered a unique astronomical feature. Dr. Matt Lister says ionized gas clouds were first predicted in the early 1970s.
He and his colleagues found evidence of one while monitoring a quasar three billion light years away from Earth. The cloud caused the refraction of the quasar’s radio waves when it passed in between.
Lister says using a quasar as a type of backlight is one method that will help to identify and learn about such clouds in the future.
The discovery was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.