The oldest light in the universe has been washing over Earth for nearly as long as time itself, yet for most of human history we had no idea it was there. Today, astronomers treat that faint glow as a kind of forensic record, a message written in radiation instead of ink. It is helping ...
You might think you know space, that you’ve seen most of what the cosmos has to offer through decades of astronomical discoveries. However, the James Webb Space Telescope is proving just how wrong we all were about the universe’s earliest chapters. This revolutionary observatory is uncovering secrets that are forcing scientists to completely rewrite the ...
The cosmic microwave background represents the earliest visible light in our universe, a fading echo from when the cosmos was just a child. For decades, scientists viewed this ancient radiation as a stable cosmic record. Yet recent observations are revealing something startling: this primordial light in ways we never expected. Picture the universe as it ...
The universe’s most ancient stars have held their secrets for over 13 billion years, but recent research is forcing astronomers to completely rethink what those earliest celestial beacons were actually like. For decades, scientists believed these primordial giants were uniformly massive monsters that burned bright and died young. Now, cutting-edge computer simulations and unexpected molecular ...
For most of human history, the night sky has been a place where stars, planets, and faraway galaxies can be seen. But what was there before the first stars came to life? Was the universe full of light when it was young, or was it a dark void? The answer is much more interesting than ...
Astronomers have been trying to fit the cosmic puzzle of how the universe changed from a dark, featureless void into a glittering expanse of stars and galaxies for decades. Now, a faint whisper from the dawn of time, a radio signal emitted just 100 million years after the Big Bang has given scientists an unheard-of ...
New research has uncovered the key players responsible for illuminating the early universe. Scientists have long debated what caused the transition from cosmic darkness to the era of reionization, when light could finally travel freely through space. Recent findings suggest that small dwarf galaxies played an important role in clearing the dense hydrogen fog that ...
