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The James Webb Space Telescope picked up radiation from ionized helium — a telltale sign that the early Universe was lit by stars composed only of hydrogen and helium, the very first suns.
Abstract
We present confirmation of a HeII λ1640 emission source located just 3 parsecs away from galaxy GN-z11 at a redshift of z=10.6. Using the high-resolution NIRSpec-IFU spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope, we confirmed earlier medium-resolution findings. The HeII line is independently backed by the detection of Hγ in the same area. The emission splits into two velocity components 120 km/s apart and boasts an extreme equivalent width (>20 Å), with no metal lines in sight. The prime suspect? Population III stars, as no other objects or mechanisms quite fit the bill.
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400 million years after the Big Bang, the James Webb Space Telescope noticed a bright spot near the galaxy GN-z11 — like a distant lighthouse whose light pushed through the primordial darkness. Splitting the glow into colors, astronomers found a clear line of extremely hot helium, its atoms stripped of electrons by unimaginable heat.
Such a glow is produced only by stars almost entirely made of hydrogen and helium, with no heavy elements — the so-called first generation of stars (Population III). They lived short lives but shone with furious brightness, then exploded, scattering the first specks of carbon and oxygen.
A twist: the spot turned out to be not a single star, but an entire cluster — a collective beacon whose combined brilliance we see. Without these first suns, the cosmos would have remained a sterile sea of hydrogen and helium forever.
🎯 The first generation stars were likely hundreds of times more massive than the Sun and burned out in just a couple of million years — on cosmic timescales, less than a blink of an eye.
