Alex Drlica-Wagner

Imagine a universe devoid of all elements apart from hydrogen, helium, and lithium. That was the state of the Universe until the formation of the first stars, around a hundred million years after the Big Bang. These stars began to forge the elements we see today through nuclear fusion and dispersed them via supernovae explosions in a process known as enrichment. Relic second-generation stars preserve the elements produced by the first stars. They allow us to study initial enrichment in detail.