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DESI Found 3,636 Sodium Absorbers
The first blind survey tracked dense neutral gas across 214,035 quasar sightlines.
Summary
The first blind survey tracked dense neutral gas across 214,035 quasar sightlines.
A blind survey of DESI Data Release 1 identified 3,636 intervening sodium doublets along 214,035 quasar sightlines over the last roughly three billion years. Injection-and-recovery tests put 50% completeness near a 0.95-angstrom rest-equivalent width and catalog-weighted purity near 77%. In the fiducial sample, absorber incidence rose by about 3.4 times from redshift 0.25 to 0.03. The foreground-galaxy association remains preliminary and awaits dedicated surveys.
Why it matters
The first blind survey tracked dense neutral gas across 214,035 quasar sightlines.
Limits and context
No additional limitation was separately recorded.
Key claims
The first blind survey tracked dense neutral gas across 214,035 quasar sightlines.
Evidence: source-2026-09-23-005
Sources
- arXiv preprint 2609.26794arXiv · primary research
Corrections
No corrections have been recorded for this story.