Ancient Gas Cloud: Relic From First Stars' Deaths Discovered

Researchers have discovered a distant, ancient cloud of gas, which likely contains the signature elements from the very first stars that formed in the universe. The study was carried out by researchers from Australia and the U.S., who found a small percentage of heavy elements such as carbon, oxygen and iron within the gas cloud, which is equivalent to less than one-thousandth the fraction observed in the sun. This gas cloud is billions of light years away from the Earth and it is about 1.8 billion years old, placing its birth as just after the Big Bang. The researchers carried out their observations using the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

"Heavy elements weren't manufactured during the Big Bang, they were made later by stars," Dr. Neil Crighton, lead author of the study from Swinburne University, said in a news release. "The first stars were made from completely pristine gas, and astronomers think they formed quite differently from stars today."

After the first stars called 'Population III' stars were formed, they exploded in a powerful supernovae, where their heavy elements were dispersed into nearby pristine clouds of gas. These clouds held a chemical record for the first stars and their deaths, this record is more like a fingerprint or evidence that is left behind.

"Previous gas clouds found by astronomers show a higher enrichment level of heavy elements, so they were probably polluted by more recent generations of stars, obscuring any signature from the first stars," Crighton said.

The researchers claimed that they are expecting to find more of these systems, so that they can measure their types and levels of elements. When new clouds are found, researchers have the opportunity to detect the various elements that these stars contain.

"We can measure the ratio of two elements in this cloud - carbon and silicon. But the value of that ratio doesn't conclusively show that it was enriched by the first stars; later enrichment by older generations of stars is also possible," said Professor John O'Meara, coauthor of the study from Saint Michael's College in Vermont.

The findings of this study were published in ArXiv.

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