Cosmic Discoveries Fuel a Fight Over the Universe’s Beginnings
Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of years, even a galaxy’s worth of stars—or unthinkably bright beacons such as those created by supermassive black holes—would have been rendered all but invisible.
Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences
Eventually this fog burned off as high-energy ultraviolet light broke the atoms apart in a process called reionization. But the questions of exactly how this happened—which celestial objects powered the process and how many of them were needed—have consumed astronomers for decades.
https://www.wired.com/2017/06/cosmic-discoveries-fuel-fight-universes-beginnings/
