November 1, 2002	Friday	Sha’aban 25,1423

LONDON, Oct 31: A group of scientists has discovered a distant star that could date back to the beginning of the Universe.

The giant star, HE0107-5240, is a galactic rarity because it is virtually metal-free unlike the other, more modern known stars, they wrote in the science journal Nature.

“These old stars provide crucial clues to the star formation history and the synthesis of chemical elements in the early Universe,” they said.

“If totally metal-free stars could be found, this would allow the direct study of the pristine gas from the Big Bang,” they added.

The existence of stars with zero or very low metal content has been hypothesized for decades, but none has ever been found before.

“This discovery suggests that (metal-free) stars could still exist — that is, that the first generation of stars also contained long-lived low-mass objects,” the scientists said.—Reuters