Recent Space Discoveries That Leave Us Severely Confused

The early universe was an approximation of hell—a roiling, opaquely dense stew of electrons and protons. Almost half a billion years passed before the baby universe cooled down enough to allow the formation of neutrons. Shortly thereafter, the universal landscape settled further so that stars and galaxies could come into being.

A recent ultra-deep survey by the Subaru telescope—located in Hawaii and run by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan—revealed seven of the earliest galaxies ever. Over 13 billion light-years distant, they appeared as unimaginably faint pinpricks of light.

In fact, they were visible only after Subaru focused on a tiny patch of sky for over 100 hours of exposure.Born only 700 million years after the big bang exploded everything into existence, these galaxies are among the earliest things ever observed and are among the first evidence of organization within the universe.