An international team of astronomers has made an unprecedented discovery by identifying the chemical signatures of the explosions of the first stars in very distant gas clouds. The study was led by Andrea Saccardi of the Paris Observatory, and using the X-shooter instrument on the Very Large Telescope, located at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the team found three distant clouds in the early universe with a matching chemical composition, with the content expected to be found in the explosions of the first stars.
Although these stars are long gone, they can be studied indirectly by detecting the chemical elements that they dispersed into their surroundings after their deaths. The light reaching us from these very distant clouds is from when the universe was only 10–15% of its current age. The X-shooter splits light into an extremely wide range of wavelengths, or colors, making it possible to identify many different chemical elements in those distant clouds.
The chemical content of these clouds is unequivocal evidence of the explosions of the first stars. Detecting the chemical elements dispersed in space is crucial to understanding how the first stars and galaxies formed and how the universe has evolved since its creation.
The results of this study were published in the Astrophysical Journal. This discovery opens a new window for research in astrophysics, as it provides important information about the early universe and how the first stars formed. Furthermore, these findings could have implications for understanding the formation of life since the chemical elements created in these stellar explosions are the fundamental building blocks of life.