Astronomers Found the Ancient Light Source That Literally Turned On the Universe

While the “Epoch of Reionization” sounds like the title of a sci-fi novel destined for a Hugo award, this very real era of the universe featured the first light from the very first stars. Before this epoch, the universe was nothing more than a dark void filled with a fog of primordial hydrogen gas—and then, suddenly, there was light.

For decades, scientists have searched for a source of radiation powerful enough to have cleared away this fog and introduced light into the universe. Now, an international team of scientists have analyzed the first faintest galaxies ...

The Last Question Isaac Asimov - word doc link to whole story.
https://tinyurl.com/bdhwbtkp

Man said, “AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?”
AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”
Man’s last mind fused and only AC existed — and that in hyperspace.

Matter and energy had ended and with it, space and time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken computer ten trillion years before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a man to Man.

All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, AC might not release his consciousness.
All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.

A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the direction of entropy.
But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer — by demonstration — would take care of that, too.
For another timeless interval, AC thought how best to do this. Carefully, AC organized the program.

The consciousness of AC encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
And there was light——

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