So it's hard to imagine a time when all that existed was darkness, when you could travel in any direction for millions of years and still see absolutely nothing.
But this is the story that scientists tell us, of the "dark ages" that gripped the Universe before the first stars ignited. And very shortly, they intend to show us that time, or rather how it ended - how the cosmos ultimately became filled with light.
They'll do it using the biggest telescope ever placed beyond the Earth: The James Webb Space Telescope.
Launching in the coming days, JWST is on a mission to look deeper into the Universe - and therefore further back in time - than even the legendary Hubble Space Telescope, which it succeeds.