Gas clouds formed after Big Bang found

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Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas which they believe were formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang that created the universe.
The discovery, the first to detect these gas clouds, adds more support to what is already the most widely accepted theory of how our universe came to be, the astronomers said.
The primordial gas clouds were found to contain only the lightest elements — hydrogen and helium — that were created in the Big Bang.
And according to the researchers, few hundred million years later, clumps of these gas clouds condensed to form the first stars, which created and dispersed heavier elements throughout the universe, SPACE.com reported.
The new observations appear to match the theoretical predictions about the chemical makeup of the early universe, said study leader Michele Fumagalli, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).
“It’s actually a very nice confirmation of the theory, because the theory predicts that in the first few minutes after the Big Bang, things like hydrogen and helium were produced and no metals,” Fumagalli said.
“So, this is the first time that we have a very strong observation and evidence that indeed this theory is correct. It’s good news for cosmology.”
Previously, astronomers had detected the presence of heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and silicon, throughout the universe. So, finding these “pristine” gas clouds, with their complete lack of heavy metals, was a surprise.
“As hard as we’ve tried to find pristine material in the universe, we have failed until now,” study co-author J Xavier Prochaska, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC, said in a statement.
“This is the first time we’ve observed pristine gas uncontaminated by heavier elements from stars.”