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July 31, 2009 - the paper The formation of Population III Binaries from Cosmological Initial Conditions, by Matthew Turk (UC San Diego/Stanford), Tom Abel (Stanford), and Brian O'Shea (MSU) was published today in the journal Science. This paper reports the first binary Population III (primordial composition) stars to be found in cosmological simulations of high-redshift structure formation, and suggests that the first generation of stars may in fact have been much less massive than previously thought. The article was accompanied by press releases by
Michigan State University and SLAC, and articles (with interviews of both Matthew Turk and Brian O'Shea) by space.com,
New Scientist,
Symmetry Magazine,
The State News, and
MSNBC, among others. The image below (produced by Ralf Kaehler), shows the gas cloud in which the binary stars have formed in our simulation. In this image, the field of view is about 2,000 astronomical units across (one astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or about 93 million miles). The two yellow clumps are the gas clouds in which the two stars are being born. (Click on the image to view a larger version.)
