2009/05/06 by Volker Bromm, Naoki Yoshida, Lars Hernquist +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature07990
published as 2009, Nature, 459, 49-54 · Review article, 27 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2009/05/06 · arxiv updated 2015/05/13
Observations made using large ground-based and space-borne telescopes have probed cosmic history all the way from the present-day to a time when the Universe was less than a tenth of its present age. Earlier on lies the remaining frontier, where the first stars, galaxies, and massive black holes formed. They fundamentally transformed the early Universe by endowing it with the first sources of light and chemical elements beyond the primordial hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang. The interplay of theory and upcoming observations promises to answer the key open questions in this emerging field.