The story of the early universe is one that astronomers are filling in with each new observation. To look back across billions of years of time, across the light-years, takes some pretty complex instruments and long observations. The story, as we know it from those studies is really intriguing.

First, we have the origin of the universe, which we actually cannot directly detect. That occurred nearly 14 billion years ago, and fairly soon after this “Big Bang” happened, there was a period of darkness called “The Dark Ages”. That was a time that the newly born universe was cooling. Eventually, conditions allowed light to pass through the masses of hydrogen and helium that existed at the time.

The period after the Dark Ages is the Epoch of Reionization, and it’s when the first stars could shine out. At that point, the first galaxies were starting to form. They were cuddled into various shapes by the gravitational influence of dark matter.

That’s sort of the executive summary of the first epochs of the universe. It would look strange to our eyes: first, just masses of gas, and, of course, darkness. Then, the formation of hugely massive monster stars, and clumps of material that would later become galaxies. It was a baby universe busily evolving and growing up using what it had at hand. There were black holes, too. But, no planets and no life.

Shaping Galaxies

Galaxy formation and evolution is another area where astronomers are still busy telling a story. The general tale is that galaxies form by cannibalizing and merging with each other. It started with little shreds of galaxies that existed more than 13 billion years ago. They collided, accreted, and got bigger. Galactic mergers and acquisitions still happen. And, somehow, black holes are involved. That part of the story is still very much under development.

Astronomers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to look at a very curious grouping of galaxies around a black hole. This image shows an artist’s concept of what it might look like if you could be close by. There are six galaxies, all arrayed around a supermassive black hole in a cosmic “spider web” that is about three hundred times the size of the Milky Way Galaxy. The whole assemblage lies about 13.1 billion light-years away, in the direction of the constellation Sextans.

The fact that they saw such a supermassive black hole so early in the universe is a tantalizing clue to the development of these odd monsters of the cosmos. To get black holes, you need massive stars. In the early universe, the first ones would have died fairly quickly and formed black holes. To get a supermassive one takes a lot of stellar-mass black holes and then, somehow, they need to get crammed together to make a black hole of a billion solar mases. That takes time, too.

So, one of the big questions is “how do you get enough fuel to make these supermassive black holes so early and so fast in the history of the universe?”

Early Universe Mix: Galaxies, a Black Hole and Dark Matter

The answer could be right in front of us now. The six galaxies arrayed around the black hole are likely providing the fuel to turn a massive black hole into a supermassive one. There’s also another key ingredient needed: dark matter. It’s likely shaping the whole collective with its gravitational influence.

The observations of this six-galaxy collection and its black hole are another important clue to conditions in the early universe. They show that giant haloes of this unknown “stuff” are also part of creating the web-like structure around the six galaxies and their companion black hole. Understanding that, and finding more examples of such activity in the infant cosmos help explain more details of conditions “way back when”. Stay tuned!

I’ve been interested in rocks since I was a kid. Our family would go for rides in the mountains to explore. I’d come home with collections of rocks and crystals in my pockets and on the floor of the station wagon. I remember getting one particularly cool-looking crystal-embedded rock while on a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. I just started at it like it was a huge treasure. That rock got lost in a family move not long after I collected it. However, it was really inspiring and I remember it after all these years.

How Did a Rock Get Started? It’s a Long Story

One thing that I used to do was look at a rock and think, “Where did you come from?” Of course, the first answer was “the park” or “the mountain”. Then, after learning more about how rocks form, I’d think about the formation process that brought the rock to me. We lived (and still live) on the edge of what was an ocean that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. Eventually (and there’s a long geologic history you can read in the famous Roadside Geology of Colorado), the oceans receded and dried up.

That left behind huge deposits of sandstones. Mountain-building processes pushed up the ancestral Rockies. they eroded away, eventually. Then, another round of mountain formation created the current Rockies. The rocks you find around here can be sandstones and shales, created from deep water deposits and shoreline areas. Or, maybe they’re granites and other rocks formed in conjunction with volcanic activity and the pushing-up of peaks to form the Rockies.

So, the rocks I used to find were probably sandstones. However, the one with the crystals clearly had formed differently from the red rocks I had collected first. And, among the rocks, we’d find fossils and, in some places, we could go and find sharks’ teeth just lying around. So, clearly, the region I grew up in had some history to it.

Everything Starts in Chemical Elements

It wasn’t until college and a chemistry class that I learned about the elements that formed the rocks and crystals I used to collect. A rock that I thought was pretty boring turned out to be feldspar, like the one in the picture here. It’s a common rock, but with an interesting history. If you ever pick one up, you’re holding a collection of elements. They can be potassium, aluminum, silicon, oxygen, sodium, or calcium in varying combinations. And, to get to BE a rock, they had to be part of volcanic activity. That could have been a flow, or when a flow impinged on another rock.

And, actually, feldspars can be found in sedimentary rocks. Those are created as other rocks erode and eventually get cemented together in layers. I won’t get into the technicality here, because it’s a lot. But, the creation of what looks like a simple pebble or rock belies a lot of activity.

Chemical Elements Started Somewhere, Too

The thing to remember is those chemical elements. They all came from someplace here on Earth. However, they didn’t start here. They GOT to Earth because some of them existed in the cloud that gave birth to our star and our planet. And, how did they get in the cloud? Well, they formed in other stars, for the most part. All but the hydrogen. That was created in the Big Bang, nearly 14 billion years ago.

So, that rock you hold in your hand? It came from space. Maybe not directly, like a meteorite, but through a long process. It included starbirth, star death, and wandering in a nebula. Then, it’s elements came together to form protoplanets. They slammed together to make a planet, which then experienced its own evolutionary history.

The next time you pick up a rock, ponder it a while. Think about its journey from space to your hand. and, then, think about the similarities it has with YOU. Because you, too, formed from chemical elements.

And me? I still pick up rocks. I have one rock from nearly every continent on Earth. And, they keep me company as I write about the cosmos from my office in mountains that formed millions of years ago to supply rocks for me to ponder.