4 unexpected lessons from the Milky Way’s weirdest star

Over the past 13.8 billion years, the Universe has evolved from a hot, dense, largely uniform early state to a clumpy, clustered, star-and-galaxy-rich state, where the typical interstellar and intergalactic distances are absolutely tremendous. The stars that exist today, importantly, are different from the stars that were created in the earliest stages of the Universe. Whereas the stars that are forming today are composed of all the recycled material that was once inside one-or-more stars and returned to the interstellar medium, the stars that were made early on were pristine: made of up primarily of hydrogen and helium alone: the material that existed shortly after the hot Big Bang. Whenever we look at a star, we gain information about the cumulative history of the Universe up until the moment that particular star formed: of all the generations that lived-and-died prior to its formation. But early on, when the first few generations of stars were forming, <a href="https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/4-unexpected-lessons-from-the-milky-ways-weirdest-star-06bf776196d9">Read More</a>