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The Early Universe. After the Big Bang, the universe was like a hot soup of particles (i.e. protons, neutrons, and electrons). When the universe started cooling, the protons and neutrons began combining into ionized atoms of hydrogen (and eventually some helium). These ionized atoms of hydrogen and helium attracted electrons, turning them into ...
- How it all started. The Big Bang was not an explosion in space, as the theory's name might suggest. Instead, it was the appearance of space everywhere in the universe, researchers have said.
- The universe's first growth spurt. When the universe was very young — something like a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (whew!)
- Too hot to shine. Light chemical elements were created within the first three minutes of the universe's formation. As the universe expanded, temperatures cooled and protons and neutrons collided to make deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen.
- Let there be light. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for electrons to combine with nuclei to form neutral atoms. This phase is known as "recombination," and the absorption of free electrons caused the universe to become transparent.
Our Understanding of Galaxies: A Timeline Galaxies are cosmic islands of stars, planets, nebulas, gas, dust, and dark matter that are separated from one another in space but collectively help to tell the story of the universe. With the Hubble Space Telescope, we have begun to understand galaxies as time capsules that chronicle how the
Traveling Back in Time:6,500 years. Nebulae are clouds of gas and dust where stars are birthed, or the remnants of a dead or dying star itself. These beautiful, ethereal cosmic objects are the subject of some of Hubble’s most iconic images, but they can also teach us more about how our universe behaves and evolves.
May 1, 2024 · Key Takeaways. Our Universe arose in the aftermath of cosmic inflation, triggering the hot Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago that eventually gave rise to us. The Universe passed through many ...
- Ethan Siegel
The timeline of the early universe outlines the formation and subsequent evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang (13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago) [1] to the present day. An epoch is a moment in time from which nature or situations change to such a degree that it marks the beginning of a new era or age. Times on this list are measured ...
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Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian scientists formulated the Large Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Ages (LEDA) in an effort to zero in on when the first stars and black holes formed, and to test cosmologists' hypotheses about conditions in the universe before stars. About 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang gave rise to ...
