The universe was very different when he was young. Astronomers have recently discovered that complex physics in the young cosmos may have led to the development of supermassive stars, each 100,000 times the mass of the Sun. We currently have no observations of the formation of the first stars in the universe, which is believed to have occurred when our universe was only a few hundred million years old. To understand this pivotal period, astronomers are turning to sophisticated computer simulations to test models of how the first stars formed.

For years, astronomers have grappled with the fundamental question of the typical sizes of early stars. Some early predictions suggested that the first stars could be hundreds of times larger than the Sun, while later simulations suggested that they would be more normal in size. Recently, a group of researchers created a new simulation series and came to a very surprising conclusion. Their simulation looked specifically at a phenomenon known as cold deposition. To build massive stars you have to compress a lot of material into a very small volume very quickly.

And you have to do this without raising the temperature of the material because a hotter material will not self-destruct. Therefore, you must find a way to remove the heat from the material, because it degrades very quickly.

Previous simulations revealed the appearance of dense pockets in early galaxies that were rapidly cooling off from radiation but lacked the necessary resolution to track their later evolution.

The new study goes a step further by investigating how the cold, dense pockets that originally formed in the early universe behave. These simulations showed that large flows of cold, condensed matter could hit the accretion disk at the center of giant clumps of matter. When this happens, a shock wave occurs. This shock wave rapidly destabilizes the gas, causing large pockets of matter to collapse suddenly.

These large pockets can be tens of thousands of times larger than the Sun, and in some cases 100,000 times larger than the Sun. With nothing to stop their collapse, they instantly form giant stars known as supermassive stars. Astronomers do not yet know whether supermassive stars formed in the early universe. They hope future observations with the James Webb Space Telescope will reveal clues about the formation of the first stars and galaxies, and determine whether these monsters arose in the nascent universe.