Tag Archives: Universes

With spectroscopy, astronomers can look for telltale signs of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects. Black holes gobble up dust and matter around them, compressing and heating the material as it swirls around and falls into the black hole. All of that can be seen with spectroscopy, said study co-author Steven Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy at the University of …

The first chemical reactions in the wake of the Big Bang have been recreated for the first time in conditions similar to those in the baby Universe. A team of physicists led by Florian Grussie of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Germany has reproduced the reactions of the helium hydride ion (HeH+), a molecule made from …

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The earliest stars formed hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang by employing helium hydride ion reactions. | Credit: John Lund via Getty Images For the first time, researchers have recreated the universe’s first ever molecules by mimicking the conditions of …

Seconds after the Big Bang, the newborn universe gave rise to the first elements—ionized forms of hydrogen and helium. These particles combined, forging helium hydride—the first ever molecule. It would take another several hundred million years for the first stars to be born, and scientists have long puzzled over the exact nature of the chemical processes that led to their …

For the first time, researchers have recreated the universe’s first ever molecules by mimicking the conditions of the early universe. The findings shake up our understanding of the origin of stars in the early universe and “calls for a reassessment of the helium chemistry in the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the new study, published July 24 in the …

Immediately after the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was dominated by unimaginably high temperatures and densities. However, after just a few seconds, it had cooled down enough for the first elements to form, primarily hydrogen and helium. These were still completely ionized at this point, as it took almost 380,000 years for the temperature …

By all rights, they shouldn’t exist. When NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) first opened its eyes to the distant past, it spotted hundreds of tiny, brilliant objects glowing red in the infant universe — just 600 million years after the Big Bang. These “little red dots,” as astronomers came to call them, gleamed with such surprising brightness and density …

New research suggests that primordial black holes created during the Big Bang could have played a major role in forming the universe’s first stars. The findings could help to assess how suitable primordial black holes are as candidates for dark matter, the universe’s most mysterious “stuff.” But the study team isn’t sure yet whether these black holes helped star formation, …

The Fantastic Four: First Steps dominated the global box office this past weekend, raking in $218 million. It also officially kicked off Phase Six of the MCU – a Phase that will only contain four movies. Yup, two fewer than Phases One and Four, even. You can check out all the Easter Eggs, name drops, tributes, etc in The Fantastic …

Astronomers think they have detected an extremely rare type of “missing link” black hole chowing down on a helpless star at the edge of a distant galaxy — and they’ve shared a stunning animation showing what this superbright stellar massacre may have looked like. Black holes come in a range of sizes, from primordial singularities smaller than the sun to …