Vera Gluscevic

In the first moments after the Big Bang, the universe was a hot soup of particles. Among them could have been neutrinos — very light and nearly elusive particles. Some of them might have been 'sterile': they barely interact with the rest of matter, like a quiet guest at a loud party.

Dark matter is an invisible substance that reveals itself only through gravitational effects: it bends the light of distant galaxies, much like an unseen window that alters the path of light rays.

Boiling milk develops a trembling skin. By watching its movements, you can guess the strength of the fire beneath the pot and the fat content of the milk. In a similar way, astrophysicists peer into the ancient microwave radiation — the oldest light that has reached us from an era when the universe was only 380,000 years old.

Imagine looking at a distant mountain range through morning fog. The peaks' outlines are blurred, and if the fog is patchy, some slopes fade more than others. That's roughly how astronomers see the ancient light of the universe, which has been traveling to us for 13.8 billion years. This light was born when the universe was just 380,000 years old, long before the first stars.