In Search of Population III Stars
Population III stars are the oldest stars in the universe. They were the first stars to form in the universe. In a paper to be published by the Royal Astronomical Society, available online now here, astronomer Jarrett Johnson addresses such questions as the link between dark matter haloes and the formation of Population III stars. It is estimated that there may be as many as thousands of these stars with a red shift between 2 and 7 (indicative of their distance). If so, Johnson expects that surveys to be done by the James Webb Space Telescope may be able to determine the number density of such Population III stars. If correct, the studies such as those proposed will be able to estimate how long the epoch of primordial star formation lasted.