Astronomers have found one of the oldest stars in the universe in a dwarf galaxy.

Astronomers led by Anirudh Chiti from Stanford University, while studying the ultralow dwarf galaxy Pictor II, discovered a chemically peculiar star PicII-503, which contains traces of elements created by the first luminaries in the universe. This was reported on March 30 by Universe Today magazine.

The discovered object contains almost no iron, but it is enriched with carbon. The Painter II galaxy, in which the star is located, is a satellite of the Large Magellanic Cloud and is located about 150 thousand light-years from Earth. According to scientists, the age of a few thousand stars in this system exceeds 10 billion years, which makes them a kind of time capsules.

"The discovery of a star that uniquely preserves heavy metals from the first stars was on the verge of what we thought was possible, given the extreme rarity of these objects," said Chiti.

The specialist added that PicII-503, with the lowest iron content ever recorded in ultraluminous dwarf galaxies, opens an unprecedented window into the study of primary production of elements.

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According to the researchers' theory, the first generation of stars consisted mainly of hydrogen and helium. In the process of thermonuclear fusion, heavier elements (carbon, nitrogen and silicon) were formed inside them. When the most massive of the first stars died as a result of supernova explosions, they ejected this substance into space. The PicII-503 star formed from a gas and dust cloud already "seeded" with elements of these long-dead predecessors.

Researchers believe that the elements in PicII-503 got there as a result of low-energy supernova explosions. In the Painter II dwarf galaxy, metals ejected during powerful explosions would simply fly off into open space.

"What makes me most happy is that we have observed the result of the very initial formation of elements in the primeval galaxy, which is a fundamental observation! This is also in clear agreement with the data we have obtained from the stars of the Milky Way's halo with the lowest metallicity, linking their origin and the enrichment of these objects with the first stars," concluded Chiti.

On March 25, the Science X news portal reported on the possible existence of primordial black holes. According to the researchers, theoretically they could have formed immediately after the Big Bang, but until now they remained hypothetical objects. If confirmed, their existence will help explain many cosmological mysteries, including the nature of dark matter, which makes up about 85% of all matter in the universe.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.