HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER
FOR ASTROPHYSICS NEWS RELEASE
Posted: September 18, 2003

The early universe was a barren wasteland of hydrogen, helium, and a touch of lithium, containing none of the elements necessary for life as we know it. From those primordial gases were born giant stars 200 times as massive as the sun, burning their fuel at such a prodigious rate that they lived for only about 3 million years before exploding.