Hi all,

First post here so be gentle please ...

Something occurred to me today.. I appreciate that stars are forming and dieing all the time and will be for a long time to come, but presumably, the greatest number of stars that were born in the same time scale were born at the beginning of the universe shortly after the big bang.

Presuming the lifespan of these initial stars would be of a similar length (give or take "x" billion years?) and when this time comes (or came) around there would be quite a spectacle in the skies when some became supernovae.


Lots of presumptions i know, but is my thinking anywhere near correct? Would all the "initial" stars form and die over a similar time frame? Has that time frame been and gone or can we, or our children's children's children, expect the firework display to end all firework displays?

Hi Curlybob0161, welcome to the BAUT forum,

That is an interesting image you're painting. Sadly reality is less interesting:

Only massive stars become supernovae, and their lifetime is much less than the age of the universe so far, so the primordial population of pre-supernova stars have already popped. Also worth noting is that the lifetime of a star depends on its mass (and other smaller factors), and that the initial masses are all different from each other, so the lifespans of stars are all different too.

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Thanks antoniseb...

I thought it was too fantastic to be true ... shame.

BTW: Love the "P"s in your sentence :

"the primordial population of pre-supernova stars have already popped."

Most lyrical

Oddly, no. The star formation rate peaked somewhere between 5 and 8 billion years ago. We still see a lot of star formation, but now it's only about one tenth of what it was at its peak. ^{-- source}

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

There was an earlier peak when the central bulges of the larger galaxies were formed (roughly BB+1GY). I didn't want to complicate my answer by mentioning the early star formation vs current star formation, but now that you've added this wrinkle, I can only cheer you on and say 'that is also right'.

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I always love knowing that without those early supernova we would not be here today

Also, those initial stars that formed right after the big bang were whopping huge monsters, possibly reaching a thousand solar masses or more. They didn't live very long and went supernova very soon after they formed.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

Now thats something you would love to see - The suckers would have been going off like fire crackers. The few mega stars we have in our galaxy absolutely ooze attitude and are only a fraction the size of those first generation beasts