Overview

• Gas streaming into a dark matter minihalo at five times the speed of sound generated supersonic turbulence in primordial star-forming clouds.
• Turbulent compression fractured a primordial gas cloud into multiple dense clumps rather than halting star formation.
• One of the dense clumps is on track to form an eight-solar-mass star, far below earlier estimates of 80–260 solar masses.
• Researchers boosted IllustrisTNG initial conditions by ∼10^5 in resolution using a particle-splitting technique to achieve sub-parsec detail.
• Smaller Population III star masses explain the absence of expected pair-instability supernova chemical signatures in later-generation stars.