Radio Telescope LuSEE, Destined for the Far Side of the Moon, Will Examine the “Cosmic Dark Ages”

For as long as humanity has been gazing at the night sky, it has been studded with countless stars and galaxies, which we study to better understand our place in the universe. However, the cosmos haven’t always been this way. Shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a sea of darkness for 400 million years — a gap in our universe’s history so alien to our current understanding of the cosmos that astronomers call it the Cosmic Dark Ages. Since this was an era in the universe before the first generation of stars was born, astronomers think it is a very good time period to examine for new, exotic physics, and to pin down the nature of dark matter and dark energy.