Stars in the early Universe ought to have contained only tiny quantities of elements heavier than helium. Previously, however, astronomers could not find stars containing less than 1/10 000th of the amount of metal found in the Sun, a value much higher than is expected for stars in the early Milky Way. Now, Norbert Christlieb and his colleagues at the University of Hamburg have found a distant star that contains only about 1/200 000th of the Sun’s metal content (N. Christlieb et al 2002 Nature 419 904).
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