Post card from the very edge of time and space

“Artist’s impression of CR7: the brightest galaxy in the early Universe.” Image by M. Kornmesser, courtesy of the European Southern Observatory.

News from way, way out there and way, way back there in time:

Astronomers said Wednesday that they had discovered a lost generation of monster stars that ushered light into the universe after the Big Bang and jump-started the creation of the elements needed for planets and life before disappearing forever.

Modern-day stars like our sun have a healthy mix of heavy elements, known as metals, but in the aftermath of the Big Bang only hydrogen, helium and small traces of lithium were available to make the first stars.

Such stars could have been hundreds or thousands of times as massive as the sun, according to calculations, burning brightly and dying quickly, only 200 million years after the universe began. Their explosions would have spewed into space the elements that started the chain of thermonuclear reactions by which subsequent generations of stars have gradually enriched the cosmos with elements like oxygen, carbon and iron.

Read the whole story by Dennis Overbye, Traces of Earliest Stars That Enriched Cosmos Are Spied, at the New York Times. And be sure to visit the European Southern Observatory’s website.