Australian Researchers Find Ancient Star

Australian researchers have discovered an ancient star that was born shortly after the Big Bang, nearly 13.7 billion years ago. The discovery might help resolve the discrepancy seen between predictions by astronomers and observations.

Researchers at The Australian National University said that the star- SMSS J031300.36-670839.3- will help them study the chemical composition of the earliest stars in the Universe. In other words, the star will open a new window to the origin of the Universe.

"This is the first time that we've been able to unambiguously say that we've found the chemical fingerprint of a first star," said Dr Stefan Keller of the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, lead author of the study. According to Keller, the star is about 6,000 light years from earth.

The team used ANU SkyMapper telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory to find the ancient star. They confirmed their discovery using Magellan telescope in Chile.

The chemical fingerprint of the star suggests that it was formed after the birth of a primordial star.

"To make a star like our Sun, you take the basic ingredients of hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang and add an enormous amount of iron - the equivalent of about 1,000 times the Earth's mass," Dr Keller said in a news release. "To make this ancient star, you need no more than an Australia-sized asteroid of iron and lots of carbon. It's a very different recipe that tells us a lot about the nature of the first stars and how they died."

Previous research had suggested that the ancient stars had a violent death. The space around them got spewed with iron. However, study of the composition of the newly discovered star shows that it is polluted by carbon and magnesium, rather than iron.

The study is published in the journal Nature.