Universe's Dark Ages May Not Be Invisible After All

StartsWithABang writes: The Universe had two periods where light was abundant, separated by the cosmic dark ages. The first came at the moment of the hot Big Bang, as the Universe was flooded with (among the matter, antimatter and everything else imaginable) a sea of high-energy photons, including a large amount of visible light. As the Universe expanded and cooled, eventually the cosmic microwave background was emitted, leaving behind the barely visible, cooling photons. It took between 50 and 100 million years for the first stars to turn on, so in between these two epochs of the Universe being flooded with light, we had the dark ages. Yet the dark ages may not be totally invisible, as the forbidden spin-flip-transition of hydrogen may illuminate this time period after all.

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Gold Medal attempt

[Anonymous Coward]

The forbidden Hydrogen spin-flip-transition was first banned at the Olympic Games of 13,299,999,996 BC due to a string of injuries. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off, although the judges may not be impressed by such an illegal maneuver, which will almost certainly result in an automatic disqualification. Still, they are choosing to make a statement of validity of the maneuver, even at the expense of a possible gold medal. Riveting. Simply riveting.