When did the 'Dark Ages of the Universe' end? This rare molecule holds the answer.

[Judi Lynn]

By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer 2 days ago

For hundreds of millions of years, the universe was nothing but darkness. One molecule holds the key to this forgotten epoch.



The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) — a network of radio telescopes in the Australian outback — is scouring the skies for traces of neutral hydrogen, the last surviving molecule of the cosmic dark ages.
(Image: © MWA Collaboration and Curtin University)

Update: This study, which had been described in the preprint database arXiv, has now been published in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal.

Long ago, millions of years before the first star sparked to life, the entire universe was a sea of darkness.

Beginning about 400,000 years after the Big Bang and lasting hundreds of millions of years, this so-called dark age of the universe marked the last time when empty space really was empty; no planets, no suns, no galaxies, no life — just a fog of hydrogen atoms forged by the Big Bang and left to slosh through the darkness.

Today, telescopes around the world are trying to catch a glimpse of that primal hydrogen (known as neutral hydrogen) in order to pinpoint the moment when the dark ages finally ended and the first galaxies formed. While those ancient atoms remain elusive, a team of researchers in the Australian outback may have come closer to finding them than ever before.

The first atoms

More:
https://www.livescience.com/neutral-hydrogen-dark-ages-of-universe.html?utm_source=notification

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. (Joke intended.) nt