Not all stars are created equally. Astronomers believe that the first stars to form after the Big Bang were mostly made of ...

The first generation of stars transformed the universe. Inside their cores, simple hydrogen and helium fused into a rainbow of elements. When these stars died, they exploded and sent these new ...

Astronomers studying how elements heavier than iron were produced in the early Milky Way have identified a distinct series of epochs of galaxy-wide chemical formation. This evolutionary timeline, ...

For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very first stars in the universe were like. These stars formed new chemical elements, which enriched the universe and allowed the next generations of ...

More than 13 billion years ago, before planets, before even most of the heavier elements that make them, the first stars ...

At just 25, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin applied quantum physics to a treasure trove of astronomical observations to show that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium.

A computational model of the early-to-present-day Universe predicts that some of the first stars formed in structures that challenge conventional classification. Read the paper: The emergence of ...

Some classes of stars create light elements, such as oxygen and silicon; others also craft heavier ones, such as iron and ...

"This is probably the first time these isotopes have existed on the surface of the Earth." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

"We were surprised that water could actually form so early on — even before the birth of the first galaxies." When did life as we know it first emerge in the universe? We don’t know for sure, but the ...

Giant flares blasted out of supermagnetized stars called "magnetars" could forge planets' worth of gold and other heavy elements such as platinum and uranium. This is the conclusion of an ...