A gas cloud has subsist the population ’s first 1.5 billion years without being contaminated with elements from stars , take it a unadulterated remainder of the Big Bang . The discovery could help us empathize the early universe ’s development .
In 2011 astronomer observedtwo gas cloudsapparently composed of the original material formed in the Big Bang . The find surprised astronomers who expected the debris of stars to have intrude on such infinite by the metre at which we were seeing them . Even more unexpected was how strange the pair seem .
concord toProfessor Michael Murphyof Australia ’s Swinburne University of Technology , the first finding were made by chance . Newly identified populations of astronomical objects discover in this mode ordinarily quickly run to the recognition of others of the same form , but for seven years search move around up nothing . Now Murphy has filled this gap , identify a third such cloud , using a method he anticipate will test an efficient path to find more examples .
Murphy ’s discovery , to be reported in theMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society(preprint available onarXiv ) , has a redshift point we are check it as it was 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang . Its gas pedal is too diffuse to have formed any stars of its own which could manufacture heavy elements , and presumably is too far from nearby galax for them to sully it .
Without star , the cloud produces no luminousness . We can observe it only because an even more removed herculean quasar Lie beyond it . The engrossment spectrum of the quasar ’s luminosity reveals the cloud ’s composition .
The quasi-stellar radio source was one of 10 Murphy and conscientious objector - authors investigate because old studies had indicated they might be illuminating clouds downcast on heavy elements . The squad are confident repeating the work with larger sample will give rise more such object . “ That will tell us exactly how rare they are and aid us understand how some petrol formed hotshot and galaxies in the early universe , and why some did n’t , ” Murphy said in astatement .
At such a great length it is impossible to prove the cloud has absolutely no heavy component , but the composition usher they are at least 10,000 times scarcer than in the Sun . Murphy enjoin IFLScience that while it is possible tiny sum of money of supernova residual have polluted the swarm , models suggest it is more likely it is totally utter .
“ We ’re interested not just in the pristine clouds , but the unity that hold the chemical signals from the long - dead first stars , ” Murphy tell IFLScience . “ Having render we can find gas clouds that flow around for at least 1.5 billion years without interacting , it should be possible to come up those that can tell us about the first multiplication of stars . ”
