It was announced this week that astronomers at The Australian National University, led by Dr. Stefan Keller, have discovered a 13.7 billion-year-old star, meaning it formed soon after the Big Bang. This is helpful to our understanding of the early universe, because by determining the chemicals present in this star (which has been done), astronomers can have a better sense of what the early universe was like.
Previously, astronomers believed that this type of star would have died in a supernova and emitted large amounts of iron into the surrounding space. However, the signature of this newly discovered star shows no iron at all, which indicates a much smaller supernova than previously thought.
The star was discovered as part of the SkyMapper program which has been searching for ancient stars for several years, while also creating a map of the southern sky.
A link to a user-friendly article about the discovery: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140209200836.htm
A link to the publication in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12990.html
Hi, Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteThe Science Daily article can be read to imply that the earliest star is 13.7 billion years old, but that's the age of the universe, and it's unlikely that any stars formed that early. Instead, we're looking to date the earliest stars, which should have formed at the end of the "dark ages" a couple of hundred million years after the big bang at 13.7 billion years ago. I couldn't access the Nature article beyond the abstract, but the New York Times article below gives a bit better picture of the "dating" process and where we stand.
Thanks for pointing out the "first star" problem. It's a critical one in our understanding of the nature of the universe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/space/the-archaeology-of-the-stars.html?_r=1