Unveiling Dark Matter: The 21-cm Forest Probe's Cosmological Revolution

A joint research team has proposed using the 21-cm forest probe to study dark matter and the formation of early galaxies simultaneously. This novel approach, made possible by the ongoing Square Kilometre Array project and the discovery of high-redshift radio-loud quasars, could provide insights into the thermal history of the universe and help constrain dark matter properties. The 21-cm forest probe, which measures the 1-D power spectrum of atomic hydrogen gas, offers a viable means of understanding dark matter and the first galaxies beyond the reach of other observations.