The first stars formed from primordial gas clouds 300 million years after the Big Bang with no metallicity. They were huge and probably existed for no more than a million years, and we may not observe them until telescope technology improves.
The first stars formed about 300 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was still dark, from primordial gas clouds. The first stars were made of hydrogen and helium, and no other elements: zero “metallicity”. In astrophysics, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen or helium.
The first stars were believed to be huge, hundreds of solar masses, because the process of fragmenting matter had just begun. The early universe was very homogeneous: there were only tiny deviations in the uniform distribution of matter. Slowly, these deviations built up and condensed into local pockets of gas. This process took an enormous amount of time because gravity is relatively weak when there isn’t already a lot of matter accumulated in one place.
The earliest stars are called “Population III” stars, in contrast to the Population II stars that came after them and Population I stars such as our Sun. These later stars have much higher metal content, which it affects their dynamics in important ways. No star much more massive than 150 suns could exist today. Due to the presence of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon in the core, hydrogen fusion reactions are catalysed and the star would fall apart before it has a chance to form.
But not so with the first stars. These things were huge. Scientists believe they caught a glimpse of the glow from these stars using the Spitzer Space Telescope. With no heavy elements in their cores, these stars fused hydrogen using the time-consuming pp proton process. However, due to their extreme mass, these stars would have had very dense and hot cores, speeding up the reactions. The first stars probably existed for no more than a million years. Because of their extreme distance, we probably won’t be able to observe them until telescope technology improves significantly.
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