Looking for first light
From a cosmic perspective, one could argue that we all come from stars. Nearly 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang spawned the universe, yielding a primordial mixture of dark matter and gas within the first few minutes. The lightest elements in this gas — hydrogen and helium — were fused in the Big Bang itself, but the other elements that have since evolved into solar systems, planets, and living organisms were formed much later.Scientists have traced production of these heavier elements, such as carbon and oxygen, to nuclear fusion within stars. But what exactly created the first stars, and when did that happen? This question of stellar origin is the focus of Robert Simcoe, an associate professor of physics at MIT. Using telescopes on Earth and in space, Simcoe is peering far into the universe’s past, searching for a period when the first stars blinked on. “What my field...
