There aren’t too many questions bigger than how our Universe came into existence. Pondering our origins has captivated scientists, philosophers and storytellers for millennia, all trying to understand those first precious moments in the beginning—and how humans eventually arrived on the scene, too.

If only it were possible to travel back through time to witness the start of everything …

In a way, travelling back in time is something that astronomers, astrophysicists and space scientists do every day when they look into space. Light takes time to travel through the vast distances of our Universe, so when we see objects that are further away we are seeing what they were like further back in time. Not surprisingly, things that are further away require more advanced instruments to measure them and we need clever ways to make sense of the data collected.

Read the full article at the Australian Academy of Science.