The drive to find answers is what propels many scientists. One nagging question remains: Where did we come from? Now cutting-edge radio astronomy is helping cosmologists peer back in time to the very start of the universe, when only Hula-Hooping particles existed. No moon. No Earth. No Milky Way. No light. Scientific American contributor Rebecca Boyle eloquently describes exciting new telescopes and experiments aimed at detecting signals from the wriggling atoms spilling out of these so-called cosmic dark ages. In addition to learning how the universe took shape, scientists hope to get intel on how the first light was released and the first galaxies formed.