Mauro Stefanon

The first two billion years after the Big Bang were an era when the universe resembled a boiling construction pit. Dark matter clumped the gas together, igniting the first stars. It seemed there simply wasn't enough time to assemble massive elliptical galaxies—'dormant' stellar metropolises — from this raw material.

The Universe at 700 million years old was a noisy construction site, just beginning to light up. Telescopes caught a signal from that distant epoch: the galaxy REBELS-25, massive and full of stellar fuel.