Cosmic Dawn: The First Star in the Universe

Multimedia · Tue Apr 29 00:00:00 EDT 2008

OSTI ID:1014054

Abel, Tom ^[1]

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1. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC)

What was the first thing in the Universe? A black hole or a star? How did it form? Even our biggest and best telescopes cannot tell us. Direct calculation with supercomputers, however, can. The first luminous objects in the Universe were very massive stars shining one million times as brightly as our sun. They died quickly and seeded the cosmos with the chemical elements necessary for life. One star at a time, galaxies started to assemble just one hundred million years after the Big Bang, and they are still growing now. Join Dr. Abel in a fascinating journey through the early universe, where he uses the latest computer animations of early star formation, supernovae explosions and the buildup of the first galaxies.

• Research Organization: SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 1014054
• Resource Relation: Conference: SLAC Public Lecture Series, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California, presented on April 29, 2008
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
BLACK HOLES
BUILDUP
COMPUTERS
EXPLOSIONS
FERMILAB ACCELERATOR
GALAXIES
STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER
STARS
SUPERCOMPUTERS
SUPERNOVAE
TELESCOPES
UNIVERSE
SLAC
ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
GRAVITY
DARK MATTER
COSMOLOGICAL ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT