{"id":549824,"date":"2026-07-14T20:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T20:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/549824\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T20:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T20:51:10","slug":"armagh-space-research-could-unlock-the-story-of-how-life-began-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/549824\/","title":{"rendered":"Armagh space research could unlock the story of how life began \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Research being led at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/armagh\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/armagh\/\">Armagh<\/a> Observatory and Planetarium could help answer one of humanity\u2019s oldest questions and pave the way for greater understanding of the origins of life, according to the astronomer leading the project. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Prof Jorick Vink is examining the first generation of stars that formed after the Big Bang to understand when and how light was first emitted into the universe. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is the subject of a new \u20ac2 million grant from the European Research Council announced on Sunday which he said could be \u201ctransformational\u201d for both the observatory and research worldwide. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">While the project will focus on how the first stars illuminated the cosmos, it could lead to further understanding of how the elements essential to life were created, he explained. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe first stars were really the moment of our own origins,\u201d he told <a href=\"\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"\" title=\"\">The Irish Times\u2019s Early Edition podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThese early stars produced the carbon in our bones, the oxygen we breathe and the iron in our blood\u201d. Decades of research has not fully explained how the universe\u2019s most abundant elements were produced. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe are going back to the very start, which could help reconstruct that story. We can test how these stars lit up the early universe\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It was the end of a period referred to as the cosmic dark ages, a mysterious era before the first stars appeared and flooded the universe with light. Understanding what happened during this period is regarded as one of the most important unanswered questions in modern astrophysics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have allowed astronomers to glimpse some of the earliest galaxies ever detected, providing fresh evidence of the universe\u2019s first generations of stars. Yet scientists still lack reliable models explaining how those stars formed and evolved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The grant will fund a team of researchers in Armagh over the years to come, creating \u201cnew opportunities for early-career scientists\u201d, Vink said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He believes the benefits of the investment will extend beyond science and put Armagh on the map.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cSocieties that invest in fundamental blue-skies research do really well historically compared with those that don\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThis is world-leading and the work we do in Armagh will have consequences not just here but all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research being led at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium could help answer one of humanity\u2019s oldest questions and pave&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[48512,908,61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-549824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-armagh","tag-astronomy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}