Scientists Have Detected the First Stars

What do the first stars in the universe, dark matter, and superior siege engines have in common? Get your own Space Time t­-shirt at Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: Trebuchet Challenge Winners: Vineet Gala Valerie Sinclair Alex Funiciello David Shearn Gwyn Paske Bruce & Angela Tremain Help translate our videos! Previous Episode: Hawking Radiation Sometimes space news sneaks by without getting much attention. Not everything wows like gravitational waves or spacefaring sportscars. That’s the case with the recent discovery of earliest stars in the universe. In a Nature paper published a few weeks ago, Judd Bowman and collaborators report a signal from the very first stars to form in our universe. The same result also hints at brand new physics that may help explain the nature of dark matter. This result flew under the radar in part because it’s a subtle and clever result that requires a bit of interpretation. Today we’re doing a Space Time Journal Club to explain this discovery. We’ll follow that with the solution to our recent trebuchet challenge question. Written and Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Produced by Rusty Ward Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow and Linda Huang Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Big Bang CoolAsCats David Nicklas Faisal Saud Anton Lifshits Joey Redner Quasar Tambe Barsbay Mayank M. Mehrota Mars Yentur Mark Rosenthal Dean Fuqua Roman Pinchuk Frank Secilia ColeslawPurdie Hypernova Edmund Fokschaner Matthew O’Connor Eugene Lawson Martha Hunt Joseph Salomone Chuck Zegar Jordan Young Ratfeast John Hofmann Barry Hatfield Craig Peterson Kevin Costello James Hughes Fabian Olesen Kris Fernet Jane Meyers James Flowers Greg Allen TJMadison Denys Ivanov Nick Virtue Alexey Eromenko Nicholas Rose Scott Gossett Mark Vasile Patrick Murray Sultan Alkhulaifi Alex Soto Michal-Peanut Karmi Erik Stein Daniel Lyons Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell J Rejc Avi Goldfinger John Pettit Florian Stinglmayr Benoit Pagé-Guitard Nathan Leniz Brandon Labonte David Crane Greg Weiss