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Like turning points in cosmic history, the birth of the first stars is hard to beat. When they burst into existence between 200 and 400 million years after the big bang, the energy that poured from them tore apart the gas atoms that had been cooling the universe, cooling it in a process called re- ionization. Then, as it burned and died, it created a cocktail of chemical elements that fueled the universe to generate galaxies, planets and, ultimately, life itself.
It is no wonder that astronomers are itching to see this first stellar generation. They were spectacular, for starters. Huge and fiercely bright, they are thought to have been up to 300 times more massive than our sun and 10 times hotter. But observing it could also tell us a lot about the mysterious early phase of the universe, not least how it became overrun with supermassive black holes in what seems like an impossible amount of time.
Now, we may finally be on the cusp. Earlier this year, astronomers reported that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), looking at its superior vision on the outside of a very distant galaxy, may have already seen evidence of the first stars. “The observations we can make now really push our knowledge forward,” says Hannah Übler at the University of Cambridge.
This signal may be a false alarm. But what is exciting now is that others are relying on the various signatures of the early light of the universe. There are also some hints that the first stars might…
