Researchers Shed Light on Birth of the First Stars

In the beginning, there were hydrogen and helium. Created in the first three minutes after the Big Bang, these elements gave rise to all other elements in the universe. The factories that made this possible were stars. Through nuclear fusion, stars generated elements such as carbon, oxygen, magnesium, silicon and the other raw materials necessary for making planets and ultimately life. "In order for us to follow the chain of events responsible for how we got here, we need to understand the beginning," said Daniel Wolf Savin , a senior research scientist in Columbia University's Astrophysics Laboratory. The work of Savin and his collaborators, who include lead author and former group member Holger Kreckel, now at the University of Illinois, will be published July 2 in the journal Science . Savin's research details a key chemical reaction that took place in the universe about a million years after the Big Bang.