New evidence suggests that the Universe began to form stars later than previously believed. This discovery may have given astronomers a clever new method of finding some of the earliest black holes. The research comes from Rennan Barkana from Tel Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy and was published in Nature.
It was previously believed that gas in the Universe first heated and formed stars about 200 million years after the Big Bang. Now, new research suggests that it could have actually been closer to 400 million years. Because the heavier elements were formed in the core of stars, the earliest stars were made almost solely of hydrogen. As the first stars died, they emitted the hydrogen out into the Universe which can be detected through radio waves.
The expansion of the Universe has stretched and distorted the light from the earliest stars - but astronomers have ways of correcting for this and actually viewing stars as they existed over 13 billion years ago. With the stars forming slightly later than was previously thought, the light does not need to travel quite as far and scientists might have an easier time of viewing these extraordinary relics. Under the previous time constraints, it was assumed that the first stars are too distant to image. The
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