For million of years after the Big Bang, the universe was a dark place filled only with wisps of hydrogen and helium, as well as the mysterious substance known as dark matter that makes up much of the universe's mass. Now, researchers have finished running a sophisticated computer program that simulated those early cosmic conditions and replicated the production of the first primordial star, which cast the first rays of starlight out into the blackness. Researchers say that the new model shows that the first star was tiny, but rapidly grew to enormous proportions before either flaming out or collapsing.
In the early universe, researchers believe that clouds of dark matter gathered and compressed pockets of hydrogen and helium gases. According the researchers' simulation, those areas reached a tipping point around 300 million years after the Big Bang, igniting the first nuclear reactions.
Over the course of about 100,000 years, ...
