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the time before the first stars
The Dark Ages
After the afterglow of the Big Bang it went dark: there was not yet a single star. That is why this belt is empty in the picture.
Key figures
- Period
- from 380,000 years to about 100-200 million years after the Big Bang
- In space back then
- almost nothing but hydrogen, helium and dark matter
- Distance today
- about 34 to 45 billion light-years
Interesting facts
- Gravity was at work all the same: gas gathered in the denser places until the first stars ignited there – huge, hot stars, much bigger than the Sun.
Can we look into it?
Not with light from stars – there were none. But the hydrogen of that time gives off faint radio waves. Researchers are building huge radio telescopes for this and are even planning some on the far side of the Moon, where there is no interference from Earth.
Where is it?
The Dark Ages belongs to the “The observable universe” level of the Cosmic Zoom (field of view about 93 billion light-years). As far as we can see at all. Light needs time – looking into the distance means looking into the past. At the edge glows the oldest light, from 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Right in the middle, invisibly small, is where we are.
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