Joel Kontinen
"Astronomers don't know exactly when the first stars formed in the Universe because they haven't been observed yet. And now, new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest the first stars and galaxies may have formed even earlier than previously estimated.
Why? We *still* haven't seen them, even with the best telescope we've got, pushed to its limits
.
A group of researchers used Hubble to look back in time (and space) as far as it could see, hoping to study these first generation of stars of the early Universe, which are called Population III stars.
Hubble peered and squinted back to when the Universe was just 500 million years old – which is thought to be Hubble's limit — and found no evidence of these very first stars.
The name — Population III – is a little confusing. Shouldn't these first stars be called Population I stars? Let's face it, astronomers have never been great about naming things.
The name Population I had already been taken when astronomers classified the stars of the Milky Way as
Population I (stars like the Sun, which are rich in heavier elements). Then, the name Population II was used to classify older stars in the Milky Way with a low heavy-element content.
Yes, population III stars have not been found.
Population III to classify the stars that were forged from the primordial material that emerged from the Big Bang, approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
Now, Rachana Bhatawdekar of the European Space Agency led this most recent study, probing the early Universe from about 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang .
Source:
Atkinson, Nancy. 2020, Hubble Has Looked Back in Time as Far as It Can And Still Can't Find The First Stars Science Alert 8 June.
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