Izay Ayesha describes the moment when the universe came out of sleep
The decisive moments of witnessing the waking up of the universe have proved extremely elusive to scientists. However, some signs of the Waking up of the Universe of some of the oldest galaxies are being identified and it is getting clearer that they were already fully formed when the universe was just 680 million years old. It was also observed that these galaxies were flooding their surroundings with extreme ultraviolet radiation. This flood-like movement resulted in formation of gigantic bubbles where the neutral gas became energised and ionised that is now offering the first direct image of a major transformational epoch in the universe.
It is now known that a long time ago there was not a single star shining across the universe and the earlier days everything in the cosmos was pretty uniform and there was just about the same average density from place to place. The situation also gradually was getting normal after the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang when the universe was so desperately hot and dense and that it was plasma. It so happened that the constant jostling had ripped apart atoms into their constituent electrons and nuclei. But all that chaos ended when the universe turned a ripe old 380,000 years old. It was the moment when things were spread out enough with low temperatures suitable enough for the electrons to combine with their nuclear families and form the first atoms of hydrogen and helium. With that event came the release of a tremendous amount of radiation that provided for the cosmic microwave background.
Millions of years saw this neutral state to continue but with cooling and expanding of the universe tiny seeds began to form that were patches of gas slightly denser than their surroundings giving them a tiny gravitational edge drawing material from their neighbourhood onto them because they had grown having an even greater gravitational influence, pulling more material onto them. Bit by bit, over eons, the first stars and galaxies grew in the silent, dark, neutral universe.
Though it is now known precisely when the first stars formed but they did because they were ionised and remained no more neutral. Now most of the material was made of complete atoms and all of the nuclei were surrounded by shells of electrons, whizzing about and combining with each other in chemical formation. However, this situation is unique because the vast majority of matter in the universe today is plasma, the same state it was in long, long ago, electrons and nuclei free to live their separate lives.
It so happened that when the universe was 380,000 years old, it transformed from plasma into a neutral gas. Now after 13 billion years later, it is mostly plasma again showing that something must have happened to rip apart all those atoms in the universe. Keeping in view that universe was plasma to begin with then what caused its re-ionisation must have occurred quite early. The thinking is that the extreme ultraviolet radiation pumped out by the first generation of stars turned our universe back into plasma. In this respect no exact time frame could be ascertained and despite most modern techniques it remains a mystery.
Though when cosmic dawn or appearance of stars is shrouded in mystery but now the situation is beginning to change. Recently three galaxies that are extremely faint, incredibly small and mind-bogglingly distant were found and these diminutive galaxies were already fully formed and operating when our universe was just 680 million years old. Though this knowledge was not new but the difference is that by examining the radiation emanating from the environment near the trio, it is discovered that the galaxies had already begun to blow bubbles of ionised plasma into their surroundings.
This discovery implies that the radiation pumping out of the galaxies had already begun to transform the universe around them. This is the first clear sign of the epoch of re-ionisation in progress giving rise to deduction that the universe had finished re-ionising by the time it hit its first billionth birthday and this means that nobody suspected that it could have happened this early. With finding more examples of re-ionisation the process of understanding when the universe woke up from its deep sleep. TW
Waking up of the Universe
ByIzay Ayesha
linguistics
Dated
December 3, 2022
Izay Ayesha describes the moment when the universe came out of sleep
The decisive moments of witnessing the waking up of the universe have proved extremely elusive to scientists. However, some signs of the Waking up of the Universe of some of the oldest galaxies are being identified and it is getting clearer that they were already fully formed when the universe was just 680 million years old. It was also observed that these galaxies were flooding their surroundings with extreme ultraviolet radiation. This flood-like movement resulted in formation of gigantic bubbles where the neutral gas became energised and ionised that is now offering the first direct image of a major transformational epoch in the universe.
It is now known that a long time ago there was not a single star shining across the universe and the earlier days everything in the cosmos was pretty uniform and there was just about the same average density from place to place. The situation also gradually was getting normal after the first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang when the universe was so desperately hot and dense and that it was plasma. It so happened that the constant jostling had ripped apart atoms into their constituent electrons and nuclei. But all that chaos ended when the universe turned a ripe old 380,000 years old. It was the moment when things were spread out enough with low temperatures suitable enough for the electrons to combine with their nuclear families and form the first atoms of hydrogen and helium. With that event came the release of a tremendous amount of radiation that provided for the cosmic microwave background.
Millions of years saw this neutral state to continue but with cooling and expanding of the universe tiny seeds began to form that were patches of gas slightly denser than their surroundings giving them a tiny gravitational edge drawing material from their neighbourhood onto them because they had grown having an even greater gravitational influence, pulling more material onto them. Bit by bit, over eons, the first stars and galaxies grew in the silent, dark, neutral universe.
Though it is now known precisely when the first stars formed but they did because they were ionised and remained no more neutral. Now most of the material was made of complete atoms and all of the nuclei were surrounded by shells of electrons, whizzing about and combining with each other in chemical formation. However, this situation is unique because the vast majority of matter in the universe today is plasma, the same state it was in long, long ago, electrons and nuclei free to live their separate lives.
It so happened that when the universe was 380,000 years old, it transformed from plasma into a neutral gas. Now after 13 billion years later, it is mostly plasma again showing that something must have happened to rip apart all those atoms in the universe. Keeping in view that universe was plasma to begin with then what caused its re-ionisation must have occurred quite early. The thinking is that the extreme ultraviolet radiation pumped out by the first generation of stars turned our universe back into plasma. In this respect no exact time frame could be ascertained and despite most modern techniques it remains a mystery.
Though when cosmic dawn or appearance of stars is shrouded in mystery but now the situation is beginning to change. Recently three galaxies that are extremely faint, incredibly small and mind-bogglingly distant were found and these diminutive galaxies were already fully formed and operating when our universe was just 680 million years old. Though this knowledge was not new but the difference is that by examining the radiation emanating from the environment near the trio, it is discovered that the galaxies had already begun to blow bubbles of ionised plasma into their surroundings.
This discovery implies that the radiation pumping out of the galaxies had already begun to transform the universe around them. This is the first clear sign of the epoch of re-ionisation in progress giving rise to deduction that the universe had finished re-ionising by the time it hit its first billionth birthday and this means that nobody suspected that it could have happened this early. With finding more examples of re-ionisation the process of understanding when the universe woke up from its deep sleep. TW
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