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 ...
Water in the great, cold nurseries where stars birth has a cosmic fingerprint. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have found, for the first time, a rare form of water ice surrounding a young star remarkably similar to our infant Sun. Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, this finding implies that some of ...
