With the help of telescopes on Mauna Kea, researchers say they discovered a distant galaxy that could have hosted the universe’s first stars.
With the help of telescopes on Mauna Kea, researchers say they discovered a distant galaxy that could have hosted the universe’s first stars.
These massive objects would have been the factories that forged elements essential to life, including oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and iron, according to a press release from the W.M. Keck Observatory.
The two 10-meter Keck telescopes were joined in the study by the Subaru Telescope, Very Large Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Together, they conducted an expansive study of the early universe that discovered several “surprisingly bright very young galaxies,” researchers said.
That included a newly found galaxy 13 billion light years away that is three times brighter than any distant galaxy previously discovered.
Researchers said there is strong evidence that the universe’s first generation of stars lurked within.
“These massive, brilliant, and previously purely theoretical objects were the creators of the first heavy elements in history — the elements necessary to forge the stars around us today, the planets that orbit them, and life as we know it,” Keck said.
Scientists have theorized that these stars would have been several hundred or a thousand times larger than the sun and blazing hot. They would have exploded in supernovae after about 2 million years.
“The discovery challenged our expectations from the start as we didn’t expect to find such a bright galaxy,” David Sobral, one of the study’s lead researchers, said in a written statement. “… Those stars were the ones that formed the first heavy atoms that ultimately allowed us to be here. It doesn’t really get any more exciting than this.”
Email Tom Callis at tcallis@hawaiitribune-herald.com.