Astronomers Discover Three of the Universe's Oldest Stars in the Milky Way

MIT researchers identify ancient stars in our galaxy's halo, offering new insights into early cosmic history.

The stars are estimated to have formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, soon after the Big Bang.
These stars exhibit retrograde motion, indicating they originated outside the Milky Way.
The discovery was made by analyzing data from the Magellan-Clay telescope and Gaia satellite.
The stars have low levels of strontium and barium, typical of the universe's earliest stars.
This finding provides a new method for locating ancient stars within our galaxy.