News Cosmology

Here’s when the universe’s first stars may have been born

Radio observations put the ‘cosmic dawn’ 180 million years after the Big Bang

illustration of early stars

TOTALLY LIT  The first stars in the universe switched on by 180 million years after the Big Bang, radio observations indicate. Ultraviolet light from early, blueish stars (illustrated) interacted with hydrogen gas, causing it to absorb background radiation, and creating a signature scientists have now detected.

N.R. Fuller/National Science Foundation

By Emily Conover

- More than 2 years ago

For the first time, scientists may have detected hints of the universe’s primordial sunrise, when the first twinkles of starlight appeared in the cosmos.