Did you know that for 800 million years after the Big Bang there was darkness — until the re-ionization of the gas throughout the universe enabled the first rays of starlight to shine?
It’s true! Until recently, we hadn’t been able to see much from this dark period. And then some gamma rays revealed a giant cosmic explosion from about 630 million years after the Big Bang. This is the most distant and oldest celestial discovery. We never saw it before because the radiation from the event/object took all those billions of years to make it this far. When did that high-energy evidence arrive? Oh, they showed up around last April. Hello!
