The James Webb Space telescope may have spotted the Universe’s first-ever stars

The gravitational lens MACS J0416, which may have helped the James Webb Space Telescope spot the universe’s earliest stars after the Big Bang. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Jose Diego (IFCA), Jordan D’Silva (UWA), Anton Koekemoer (STScI), Jake Summers (ASU), Rogier Windhorst (ASU), Haojing Yan (University of Missouri)) (Image: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

Stargazers often look for traces of ancient time, and one faint galaxy is now stirring quiet excitement. Its light carries whispers from the universe’s early years. Scientists say this soft glow may reveal stars never seen before. These clues come from one of JWST’s first deep targets, a system whose signals travelled across most of cosmic history.

Possible Population Three Stars Detected

Astronomers now ask if these are the universe’s earliest Population Three stars. The distant galaxy LAP1-B shows extremely old activity, and its light moved 13 billion years to reach JWST. We see this system as it existed 800 million years after the Big Bang. Researchers think its stars match predictions for the first stellar generation formed only from hydrogen and helium. Team leader Eli Visbal told Space.com that JWST’s sensitivity and strong gravitational lensing made this observation possible. The lensing came from the massive cluster MACS J0416.1-2403, which lies around 4.3 billion light years away and magnified the distant light.

Clues Hidden in Distant Galaxy LAP1-B

Scientists next ask how such ancient stars can be identified. The galaxy appears during the reionisation epoch, which ended the universe’s early darkness. Population Three stars likely formed 200 million years after the Big Bang when cooling gas created huge stellar bodies. Visbal said these stars arose inside small structures that shaped early galaxies and helped reveal dark matter behaviour. They stayed difficult to detect because they formed in small groups and were extremely faint. Their very low metal content makes them unlike modern stars, which formed later from richer material.

Gravitational Lensing Helps Reveal Early Universe

Researchers also ask what JWST detected inside LAP1-B. The team found gas with almost no metals, and the stars appear grouped in clusters near a thousand solar masses. This pattern matches predictions for first generation star formation. The team says gravitational lensing may help reveal more early stars at high redshifts. Visbal said the results surprised him since such stars seemed too rare to appear in a strongly lensed region. He plans deeper simulations to study the shift from Population Three to Population Two stars and compare them with the LAP1-B spectrum. The research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and highlights a significant advance in understanding cosmic origins.