I know you may not know. You probably dont, But it is all so confusing about how the earth and the universe started.

Question: I know you may not know. You probably dont, But it is all so confusing about how the earth and the universe started. How long was it before the hydrogen and helium created the first stars and so on? Surely it couldnt have been there for AGES.
- Keywords:
  beginning of universe,
  helium,
  hydrogen
Asked by chickenbrap101 to Ceri, Arttu on 23 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by jabby.
- Arttu Rajantie answered on 23 Jun 2011:
  
  It is believed that the first stars formed when the universe was around 200 million years old. We cannot see quite that far with our current instruments (remember that light travels at finite speed, and therefore we farther we look in distance, the farther we also see into the past). Besides distance, they are also hard to see because galaxies had not formed, so there were just isolated stars in space, rather than big, bright galaxies. The astronomers can actually see some of the first galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope, and therefore we know that they existed when the universe was only 500 million years old. For comparison, the age of the universe is 13,7 billion years, so the first stars formed quite soon.

Question: I know you may not know. You probably dont, But it is all so confusing about how the earth and the universe started. How long was it before the hydrogen and helium created the first stars and so on? Surely it couldnt have been there for AGES.