Unlocking the secrets of the universe

Long ago, about 400,000 years after the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang), the universe was dark. There were no stars or galaxies, and the universe was filled primarily with neutral hydrogen gas.

Then, for the next 50-100 million years, gravity slowly pulled the densest regions of gas together until ultimately the gas collapsed in some places to form the first stars.

What were those first stars like and when did they form? How did they affect the rest of the universe? These are questions astronomers and astrophysicists have long pondered.

Now, after 12 years of experimental effort, a team of scientists, led by ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration astronomer Judd Bowman, has detected the fingerprints of the earliest stars in the universe. Using radio signals, the detection provides the first evidence for the oldest ancestors in our cosmic family tree, born by a mere 180 million years after the universe began.

Continued...
Source

Credit: N.R.Fuller, National Science Foundation

This artist's rendering shows the universe's first, massive, blue stars embedded in gaseous filaments, with the cosmic microwave background just visible at the edges. Using radio observations of the distant universe, NSF-funded researchers Judd Bowman of Arizona State University, Alan Rogers of MIT and their colleagues discovered the influence of such early stars on primordial gas. Although they can't directly see the light from the massive stars, Bowman's team was able to infer their presence from dimming of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a result of the gaseous filaments absorbing the stars' UV light. The CMB is dimmer than expected, indicating that the filaments may have been colder than expected, possibly from interactions with dark matter.

Source / Image Courtesy

 

Credit: N.R.Fuller, National Science Foundation

A timeline of the universe, updated to show when the first stars emerged. This updated timeline of the universe reflects the recent discovery that the first stars emerged by 180 million years after the Big Bang. The research behind this timeline was conducted by Judd Bowman of Arizona State University and his colleagues, with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Source / Image Courtesy

GRB 101225A, aka the 'Christmas burst,' was an strangely long-lasting gamma-ray burst. The distance was not measured; astronomers originally
had two radically different interpretations.

In the first, a solitary neutron star in our own galaxy swallowed an approaching comet-like body. In the second, a neutron star is ingested by an mature giant star in a galaxy far away.

New measurement of the burst's host galaxy suggest it represents the supernova of a huge star hundreds of times larger than the sun.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

 

Thank you for sharing Dragon...