
Discovery of Universe's First Stars' Remains in Distant Gas Clouds
Astronomers have identified the chemical traces of the explosions of the first stars in very distant gas clouds, giving us a glimpse at what remains of the very first stars ever born. The material they leave behind in those explosions lays bare the products of the atomic fusion that took place in their cores. Although we're yet to see Population III stars in the wild, it is possible to find their remnants, and with powerful enough tools, we can probe these traces to learn more about the evolution of matter in the Universe, as stars change the elemental abundances of the stuff around us over time.