The earliest stars in the universe might have been beasts of a different nature than modern stars, a new model suggests. While nuclear reactions between ordinary chemical elements fuel the fire of stars like Earth’s own sun, mysterious dark matter might have powered the first stars.
In the standard account of star formation, clouds of hydrogen and helium become unstable and start to cool and condense into small protostars. Shrinking under their own gravity, protostars eventually become dense and hot, and their atoms begin to fuse. This ongoing fusion reaction is the power behind starlight.