Research Reveals First Stars Rose Later Than We Thought

Early observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have long released data indicating suggestions on the stars' formation. However, ESA's Planck satellite has recently revealed that the Universe's first stars formed later than what the previous observations say.

According to IFL Science, it took a really long time for the stars to form. The latest research says that between 300 and 500 million years after the Big Bang, only few portions of stars were present. Astronomers obtained the findings by using the CMB or the light from the Big Bang itself.

At present, there are numerous stars and galaxies in the Universe; hence even scientists and experts find it hard to imagine how everything was 13.8 billion years ago. The Universe was a few seconds old then. It appeared like an 'opaque' fog; light particles could not travel enough before colliding with electrons. It was really hot and comprised of protons, electrons, neutrinos, and photons as well.

Meanwhile, the reionization epoch is currently being probed by the Plack collaboration. It is defined by the universe's phase when the light of the first stars split the hydrogen (formed after the Big Bang) into protons and electrons. According to Matthieu Tristram, besides the first stars, no other agents were needed to reionize the universe. He added that through the CMB, we would know when the period of reionization started; after which we would know when the first stars formed. Tristram is a Planck Collaboration scientist at the Linear Accelerator Laboratory (LAL) in Orsay, France.

According to Phys.org, the reionization process was completed by 50 percent when the Universe reached 700 million years old. Data can be found in a paper published in Astronomy & Physics. We may have found numerous clues about the first stars, but more and further direct observations are still needed. In 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will be used to see some of them.