First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time

by Emma Chapman

Overview

Opens a window into a previously dark and secret time in our universe's history: when the first stars were born.

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up, we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe.

This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself.

Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Dr Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472962928
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Emma Chapman is a lighting designer known for her work on productions including Kiss Me, Kate (Paris, Luxembourg); Marjorie Prime (Menier Chocolate Factory, London); Ghost Quartet (Boulevard Theatre, London); The Importance of Being Earnest (Theatr Clwyd, Mold), Lungs (Paines Plough); and the Olivier-award-winning play The Mountaintop (Trafalgar Studios). She was Co-Designer of Roundabout, The Stage Awards' Theatre Building of the Year in 2015. She is co-chair of the Association for Lighting Production and Design Awards Working Group and a member of the Association's Wellbeing Working Group. Emma has also worked as a theatre consultant and designer for Charcoalblue and was a founding member of studio three sixty. www.emmachapman.co.uk

Table of Contents

Introduction

1: Over the Rainbow

2: Where is Population III?

3: The Small Bang

4: A Lucky Cloud of Gas

5: The Dark Ages

6: Fragmenting Stars

7: Stellar Archaeology

8: Galactic Cannibalism

9: The Cosmic Dusk

10: The Epoch of Reionisation

11: Unknown Unknowns

References

Acknowledgements

Index

Editorial Reviews

2020-10-22
An update on the early years of the cosmos.

In her first nonfiction book, Chapman reviews the history, including new discoveries which have overturned accepted theories on the evolution of the universe, but she reserves most of her excitement for the “dark ages”—from 380,000 to roughly 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The early universe was a superheated soup of subatomic particles and energy. After nearly 400,000 years, the temperature had dropped enough to allow electrically neutral atoms to form and photons to travel freely. There was light and gas but nothing else. As it expanded and cooled, its matter—almost all hydrogen and helium—drifted about. Eventually, some clouds drifted together, and gravity began to pull. The clouds shrank and grew hotter, and a collapsing cloud grew so hot—millions of degrees—that its hydrogen became helium in a process known as fusion, which produces titanic amounts of energy. These were the first stars, born perhaps 180 million years after the Big Bang. Mostly brighter, hotter, bigger, and shorter-lived than today’s, they ended their lives and blew up, which produced “metals” (in astrophysics, elements other than hydrogen and helium) and scattered them, a process that formed other stars and eventually planets and humans. Do any primordial, metal-free stars still exist? The big ones are long gone, but small, sunlike stars have extremely long lifetimes. Evidence for their existence is turning up in obscure regions, such as dwarf galaxies and the outskirts of the Milky Way. Detecting them requires massive observatories, high-tech spectrographs, and the soon-to-be-launched $10 billion James Webb space telescope. Clearly fascinated by her subject, Chapman works diligently to describe the early universe, gradually introducing information about the life cycles of stars and techniques astrophysicists use to search for them. Her careful step-by-step explanations delve far deeper than a NOVA documentary, so readers must pay attention, but most will find it worth the effort.

Good astrophysics for committed readers.

Kirkus Reviews

An illuminating-and entertaining-look at the earliest stars of our cosmos.

Chapman is a witty and straightforward guide … and her enthusiasm for the chase is infectious.

First Light conveys the wonder and mystery of darkness suddenly illuminated by magnificent starlight.” —Washington Post

“Thoroughly engaging … allows us to see science in the making, chronicles current attempts to reveal this hidden era - what we know and what we don't know. Chapman herself is in the thick of this endeavor and serves as a wonderful guide, whose voice is reminiscent of Carl Sagan's, although with an extra and very welcome dollop of impish humor.” —Wall Street Journal

“First Light is a fantastic debut on the popular science scene for Emma Chapman that fleshes out the context around these two key functions. My opinion: come for the state-of-the-art on the first stars, stay for the comprehensive primer on modern cosmology, and revel in the footnotes.” —Nature Astronomy

“First Light is a dispatch from the frontiers of science, from a brain fizzing with ideas and energy.” —Chris Lintott, BBC Sky at Night

“Her everyday examples of complex concepts are conversational, witty and elucidating … Chapman manages to effectively convey the gist of most of this most complicated of space sciences … Chapman's most valuable asset here, aside from her obvious expertise, is her enthusiasm ...

All of this is astounding, so much so that it almost defies explication, which is why it is such a treat to have someone of Chapman's stature willing to carry us along as she reaches for these ancient stars.” —The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Throughout First Light, Chapman's authenticity and humour shine through … In short, this is a charming book that is as fun to read as it is informative, making it as ideal for the casual reader as for those with an existing understanding of the field.” —Physics World

From the Publisher