David Kipping

James Webb might be able to detect one.

Those would be the first stars ever born.

They're like the primordial pristine stars that would be uncontaminated by any metals.

So our sun has a ton of metals in it.

Most stars do.

We can use that to figure out how old they are and their history.

But the first stars would have been just these pure, pristine hydrogen helium things.

We'd love to be able to see what they look like because we've never seen one of those up close.

But generally, yeah, the smaller you are, the easier it is to make that star.

Yeah, those stars would be the first stars.

So you're probably looking at 100 million years after the Big Bang.

So, yeah, you'd have to look back to, you know, 13.7, 13.8 billion years ago.

Is the James Webb capable of seeing that?

I think it's possible.

Yeah, I don't think there's consensus on this.

I've seen some people say it might just about be possible and others say it's completely impossible.

You need the next generation.

But I think if we're lucky, it could just happen.

Yeah.

The ultimate... I mean, I love this idea of thinking about what would an alien do?