No, you can't do this at home. Staring at any old ordinary blurry dots won't tell you anything about the Universe. However, scientists have been working on Ultra Deep Field images from Hubble and now have some idea of how the first act ended:
It's nice to know that the blur tells us it was a cosmic fog. I like that.Astronomers billed their findings, released Thursday, as a possible glimpse of the "end of the opening act" of galaxy formation. The light from the young galaxies left them when the universe was just 5 percent of its present age, which is now approximately 13.7 billion years.
After the Big Bang, theorists say, the universe was hotter than the Sun. There were no stars, but rather a searing soup of hydrogen nuclei, and electrons that raced around on their own. As space expanded, the universe cooled, allowing the hydrogen nuclei to capture electrons, making what is called neutral hydrogen.
The universe was opaque, blocking the release of light like morning fog.
It's reassuring that perhaps the Universe was conceived in the mindof a stoned, drunk, hippy-like God. Or not at all.
- Art Neuro
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