NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have captured signs of the very first stars ever created after the Big Bang. These ancient stars, known as Population III or POP III stars, have possibly been found in a distant galaxy called LAP1-B, located about 13 billion light-years away, according to a study published last month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A team led by astronomer Eli Visbal has shared evidence that these early stars could be present in LAP1-B. Using JWST’s powerful infrared sensors, they detected signs showing that these stars gave off extremely strong ultraviolet light and were roughly 100 times the mass of the Sun.

The researchers say LAP1-B meets all three conditions that scientists believe are necessary for POP III stars to form:

  • The stars were born in a place with very few elements, mostly hydrogen and helium.

  • They formed in tiny clusters that had only a few, very large stars.

  • The cluster fits the mathematical rules for what scientists call the “initial mass function.”

Visbal told Space.com, "If indeed Pop III, this is the first detection of these primordial stars. To discover POP III stars, we really needed the sensitivity of JWST, and we also needed the 100 times magnification from gravitational lensing from a galaxy cluster between us and LAP1-B."

These early stars may help scientists understand how the universe looked in the beginning. They are thought to be the first building blocks from which larger galaxies grew. According to widely accepted theories, these stars formed when hydrogen and helium mixed with dark matter, creating massive stars that were a million times heavier than the Sun and a billion times brighter.

Visbal said the team plans to run more detailed computer simulations to see how these first stars slowly transitioned into the universe’s second generation, called Pop II stars. "Next, we want to perform more detailed hydrodynamical simulations of the transition from Pop III to Pop II stars to see if they are consistent with the spectrum of LAP-1B and similar objects," he said.

The researchers also believe there may be many more similar ancient star clusters waiting to be found. As they noted, "LAP1-B may only represent the tip of the iceberg" when studying Pop III stars using gravitational lensing.