23
October 2003
Star formation: Seconds in
Ironically we know more about the first generation of stars in the Universe than we do about the second. The first stars were probably hundreds of times more massive than the Sun and millions of times brighter. They ended their life in massive supernova explosions, leaving a build-up of elements — mainly carbon and oxygen — behind. New numerical simulations show that once the promordial gas left over from the Big Bang became enriched by supernovae to a carbon or oxygen abundance 0.01–0.1% that of the Sun, low-mass stars could have begun to form. This is consistent with the unusual low-iron high-carbon composition of a recently discovered population of solar-mass stars, and provides a way of identifying those stars in our Galaxy with elemental patterns imprinted by the first supernovae.
The formation of the first low-mass stars from
gas with low carbon and oxygen abundances
VOLKER BROMM & ABRAHAM LOEB
Nature 425, 812–814 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature02071
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