An international squad of astronomer has discovered some of the sure-enough stars in the Milky Way . In the outgrowth , they were able to learn a lot about the abundance of different constituent in the very early universe .
These star topology , which are part of the second generation of stars to organize in the universe , were divulge near the very center of the Milky Way and they are believe to have started shining 200 million years after the Big Bang . The scientists think that their finding , bring out inNature , give an indicant of the life and death of the very first star .
The first stars are believe to have been huge , have up to 1,000 time the mass of the Sun . It is cerebrate that when these object pass the end of their life sentence , they exploded in hypernova explosion , tenner of times potent than the supernovae we see in the world today . The first propagation have not been directly observe yet , but astronomer hope to see them when theJames Webb Space Telescope(JWST ) begin operation in 2018 .
The 2d generation , let in the stars from this study , are alloy - poor : They are made almost only of helium and hydrogen , with only traces of labored elements ( the “ metals ” ) . The more metallic element a star has , the quicker it forms and the diminished it is .
After the Big Bang , the universe was frame of just atomic number 1 and helium . This is why the first - generation stars were so big . The carbon paper in our body , the O in the air and all the other heavy constituent we find in the universe were formed by the first two generations of stars .
The discovery did n’t come easy . There are million of stars in the Milky Way ’s bulge , so the team had to prepare a scheme to make the gargantuan task of observing them in point more manageable .
Since very metal - misfortunate principal are slightly bluer than other sensation , the researchers selected 14,000 promising stars from theANU SkyMappertelescope in Australia . Only 23 of them were then studied in more contingent in follow - up observations .
“ There are so many headliner in the plaza of our galaxy – find these uncommon star is really like look for a needle in a haystack , ” said co - generator Dr Andrew Casey of Cambridge ’s Institute of Astronomy in astatement . “ But if we select these ace in the correct way , it ’s like burning down the farm and sweeping up the needles with a magnet . ”
The component bring out by the first star topology act as a chemical substance touch that is still present in the virtuoso celebrate in the bailiwick .
“ This workplace confirms that there are ancient stars in the inwardness of our galaxy . The chemical signature imprinted on those genius severalise us about an epoch in the universe of discourse that ’s otherwise completely unobtainable , ” aver Casey . “ The universe was probably very dissimilar early on , but to know by how much , we ’ve really just experience to obtain more of these stars : more needles in bigger rick . ”
