Comments on: Astronomers Simulate the First Stars Formed After the Big Bang

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:32:35 +0000

Hi Clint
Guess? The next space telescope will able to see them – so call the simulated stars "observational hypotheses" not guesses.

By: Clint

Clint — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:01:18 +0000

I like what they're doing, but it's pointless. Their results are only as good as the data and program they used. We do not know, nor will we ever know what the conditions were at the moment of creation or what happened shortly after the big bang. As far as a guess is concerned, it's interesting, but a guess is all it is.

By: Thameron

Thameron — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:58:50 +0000

"…all of the elements in our bodies originally formed from nuclear reactions in the centers of stars, long ago."

ALL? We are not just made up of heavy elements which require stellar nucleosynthesis. A goodly portion of us is hydrogen. How do they know that some of that hydrogen isn't original material from the creation of the universe?

By: john

john — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:41:18 +0000

Keep on working fellas

By: alphonso richardson

alphonso richardson — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:55:20 +0000

It'll be interesting to see what happens if they get the additional computing power.

By: AJames

AJames — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:15:03 +0000

Yes, the Population III stars are extremely interesting and have been popularly in the literature since the 1980s. Evidence in searching for these elusive objects have been mainly looking for white dwarf embers, whose unique spectra should be fairly pure in helium – best observed in the ultra-violet frequency of HeII at 164 nm (nanometers). The reasoning is that the first stars were "unpolluted" with 'metals' (Z parameter), being almost purely hydrogen and helium. (The article referenced below gives one thousandth to one ten thousandth these metals seen in today's stars.)

An interesting very recent article on this at arvix
The search for Population III stars, by
Sperellodi Alighieri and colleagues. Who state these star theoretically could have been as massive as 500 solar masses, where as the biggest stars forming today is between 80 to 100 solar masses. (Although the large stars found in binary systems, where we have direct evidence, are around 30 solar masses.

The first real evidence of these Pop III stars was in 2003, with a strong HeII 164nm line was found in a dwarf lensed galaxy with at distance z=3.4. Another, which has strong possibilities of finding Pop II was found by Kurk et.al. in 2004 in the galaxy KCS 1166 with a z=6.518. Other possibilities are likely in the future.

It is interesting that direct observations continue to be difficult to prove because the time and fast evolution of these Population II stars in that they say;

"All these characteristics point strongly to the presence of Pop III stars, some of which might have already exploded to partially enrich.[these galaxies]… this [discovered] uncontaminated signature of Pop III stars might have a much shorter duration in the massive galaxies, which are the only observable galaxies at high redshift. This might be the reason why Pop III stars have not yet been detected at high redshift, where they have been searched so far,"

No doubt the future investigations into these predicted stars with find evidence to prove the theorists right.

By: Helio George

Helio George — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:55:21 +0000

Finally some white stars. But, these should be blue! Dang!

Still it's a great story. I'm made from some of these, but I don't think it's the yellow one.