Astronomers Claim to Find the Most Distant Known Galaxies (Forwarded)

From: Andrew Yee
It is thought that when the universe was 300,000 years old it
entered a period when no stars were shining. Cosmologists refer
to this phase of cosmic history as the "Dark Ages."

That's poorly worded. It seems to be saying that from the very
start of the Big Bang until 300,000 years after it, there were
stars shining, then they stop shining as the "Dark Ages" began. In
fact there were no stars at all anytime before the "Dark Ages" nor
during most or all of the "Dark Ages" themselves. (There was a
period of time around the end of the "Dark Ages" when the first
stars existed, and shined locally, but their UV light was absorbed
and scattered by neutral hydrogen, preventing most of that energy
from being seen from afar. But that's irrelevant to the definition
of the *start* of the "Dark Ages".)

Also, what's the most accurate current estimate of the end of the
opaque big-bang fireball, when the Universe became transparent to
visible light for the first time, allowing the background radiation
(now redshifted to microwave) to be released, which I understand to
be the correct definition of the start of the "Dark Ages"? I read
380,000 years recently, updated from 300,000 or 400,000 that I had
read many years previously. Is that incorrect, it's back to 300,000?