Aigen Li

The era of cosmic noon is a time when the Universe was experiencing its stormy youth. Three billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were giving birth to stars at a frantic pace, and supermassive black holes were growing in their centers.

The Tarantula Nebula is a giant stellar nursery in a neighboring galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of stars are born there, and their light illuminates clouds of dust. This dust glows in the infrared, and its spectrum shows mysterious bands. For a long time, astronomers debated which molecules produce them.