Cosmic star formation goes into decline
After Cosmic Noon the universe begins running out of the cold gas that makes stars.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1.5 billion years
- Era
- Enrichment, Stelliferous
From its peak the cosmic star-formation rate falls by roughly a factor of ten, and it is still falling. Gas is consumed, locked into long-lived stars, or heated and expelled by supernovae and feeding black holes, and the expansion of space makes what remains harder to gather. The universe now forms stars at a fraction of its former rate, and the great majority of stars that will ever exist already do.