The first stars form from metal-free gas

Assembled from 32 blocks · 1 evidence · 29 related

1. Story
2. The earliest generation of stars condensed out of gas containing only hydrogen, helium and traces of lithium left by Big Bang nucleosynthesis. With no carbon, oxygen or dust to radiate heat away, that gas could not cool efficiently, and theory predicts the first stars were consequently far more massive than typical stars today. No individual first-generation star has ever been observed; the epoch is constrained indirectly, by the composition of the oldest surviving low-mass stars and by observations of the earliest galaxies. The date is a model-dependent bracket, not a measurement.
3. Knowledge
4. Initial stellar mass
5. Giant molecular cloud
6. Stellar nucleosynthesis
7. The first stars form from metal-free gas
8. Connections
9. Giant molecular cloud
10. Stellar nucleosynthesis
11. Initial stellar mass
12. Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and the Pillars of Creation
13. Protostar
14. Planetary nebula
15. Supernova
16. The first stars form from metal-free gas
17. The Sun forms and settles onto the main sequence
18. Hubble photographs the Pillars of Creation
19. Hydrogen fusion: the proton-proton chain and the CNO cycle
20. The iron peak in nuclear binding energy
21. Rapid neutron capture (the r-process)
22. The first stars form from metal-free gas
23. B2FH sets out the synthesis of the elements in stars
24. A neutron-star merger is detected in gravitational waves and light
25. Hydrogen fusion: the proton-proton chain and the CNO cycle
26. Main sequence (core hydrogen burning)
27. Supernova
28. Protostar
29. The first stars form from metal-free gas
30. SN 1987A: neutrinos from a collapsing core reach Earth
31. Evidence
32. Establishes stellar nucleosynthesis as the origin of the elements heavier than helium and organises production into distinct nuclear processes including slow and rapid neutron capture. Title, authors, journal, volume and pages were read from ADS and publisher listings via search; the review itself was not fetched, so the internal process taxonomy is described from secondary accounts.