Not enough carbon to light the early Universe 21 June 2009 An international team of astronomers has discovered the oldest and most distant carbon in the Universe, but there's not enough of it to support standard theories of how the Universe lit up, a member from Swinburne University of Technology has calculated. In the early Universe a dark pervasive fog of neutral hydrogen gas lurked everywhere. Astronomers think that this fog cleared when the first stars formed and emitted light. There is a close connection between the amount of light and carbon produced in stars. But adding up all the 13-billion-year-old carbon detected, Dr Emma Ryan-Weber and her collaborators came to the conclusion the amount of carbon, and therefore the number of massive stars, was insufficient to lift the fog. "So light must come from somewhere else, perhaps an unknown population of quasars, or stars that lock-up more of their carbon, or carbon hidden in unobserved states." When the Universe began with the big bang only hydrogen and helium existed. After the first massive stars exploded as supernovae they sprinkled their products of carbon and other elements-of which you, I, and the Earth are comprised-all over the cosmos. The researchers know the carbon they have discovered is old because it was detected in the infra-red wavelength rather than in the ultra-violet as on Earth. The Universe has expanded so much since the Big Bang, that the wavelength of the light from carbon atoms has stretched from 155 to 1085 nanometres