Why Finding The First Stars In Our Universe Puts Us Closer To The Big Bang

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Photo: Astronomers detect ancient signal from first stars in universe
Astronomers detect ancient signal from first stars in universe. (Artist rendering.)

Astronomers have detected the first stars ever to shine in the universe, an event that happened more than 13 billion years ago. No one’s actually seen them -- scientists picked up their radio waves. But Doug Duncan, director emeritus of the Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, says the discovery may be the most significant find in astronomy since gravitational waves. Scientists want to understand our universe and how it formed from the earliest time, and this puts us incredibly close to the very beginning - the Big Bang.