A NASA graphic describes the evolution of the universe. Credit: NASA
Ohio State researchers helped make a high-precision measurement of primordial helium, giving scientists a new way to examine how the universe formed just minutes after the Big Bang.
The project used the Arizona-based Large Binocular Telescope, which captures near-infrared images of deep space objects, to study 60 of the most oxygen-poor galaxies that researchers could find. Specifically, researchers wanted to measure the amount of helium created by the explosion that physicists theorize led to the creation of the universe.
University researchers have played a central role since 2020, from designing the observing program and collecting data to reducing and measuring infrared. The team spent roughly five years on this project, gathering observations and data, which was completed in the spring of 2025.
“We’ve measured something fundamental about the universe,” said Miqaela Weller, an Ohio State doctoral candidate in astronomy, who worked on the project.?
Weller said the high-precision result, recently published in the Astrophysics Journal, agrees with the current leading model of the universe? This, in turn, gives researchers better support that their understanding of the early universe is on the right track.
About 90 percent of the universe’s helium formed when the universe was only three to 15 minutes old, said Richard Pogge, an Ohio State astronomy professor and a founding member of the project.?
By studying galaxies with very little oxygen, the researchers could separate helium produced later by stars from the helium that was created during the Big Bang.
“It won’t be zero helium; it will find the floor, and that floor is the primordial helium that came out of the Big Bang,” Pogge said.
The discovery is especially significant because scientists cannot directly observe the universe within its first few minutes, Pogge said. The earliest light astronomers can see, he said, comes from hundreds of thousands of years later. Helium provides evidence from much earlier.
This result allows researchers to investigate an era that cannot be directly observed. By precisely measuring an element that is abundant throughout our universe today, Pogge and his colleagues? have turned helium into a record of a time humans can never see.?
“What really distinguished this project from others, is a lot of the previous studies would just take data from wherever they could get it, and would sometimes mix up old and new data,” Pogge said. “When you’re doing something to get higher precision, you’ve got to know where every number came from.”
