Chemical composition of stars

Left: An artist's impression of a globular cluster near its birth, inhabited by extremely massive stars with powerful stellar winds rich in elements processed at extremely high temperatures. Right: An ancient globular cluster as it appears today: the remaining light stars retain traces of the winds of those extremely massive stars, which have already collapsed into intermediate-mass black holes. Credit: Fabian Bodensteiner; Background: Image of the Milky Way's globular cluster Omega Centauri, taken with the WFI camera at ESO's La Silla Observatory.

Stars 10,000 times more massive than the Sun dominated the early universe

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A new model suggests that extremely massive stars in ancient globular clusters shaped their chemical composition, contributing to the formation of the first galaxies and the emergence of intermediate-mass black holes.
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