Astronomers claim to have detected first starlight

Astronomers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland claim they have captured traces of radiation from long-extinguished starts that were born right after the Big Bang which is thought to have happened 13.7 billion years ago.

It's believed the first stars came about 100 million year later when hydrogen atoms began to merge and ignite.

Kashlinsky's team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to measure the cosmic radiation, which is infrared light invisible to the human eye, in a small sliver of the sky. The team then subtracted the radiation levels of all known galaxies and suggested that the leftover measurements include radiation given off by those earliest stars.

The exercise was like taking a recording of a stadium full of loud people and subtracting the noise of every person except one to hear the voice of that single individual.

If the team's conclusions are correct, the study will advance understanding of how the universe originally lit up.

However, some other scientists are sceptic about the results.. More info over at CNN.