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Research Article

Detection of Pristine Gas Two Billion Years After the Big Bang

Michele Fumagalli [email protected], John M. O'Meara, and J. Xavier Prochaska
Science • 10 Nov 2011 • Vol 334, Issue 6060 • pp. 1245-1249 • DOI: 10.1126/science.1213581
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Abstract

In the current cosmological model, only the three lightest elements were created in the first few minutes after the Big Bang; all other elements were produced later in stars. To date, however, heavy elements have been observed in all astrophysical environments. We report the detection of two gas clouds with no discernible elements heavier than hydrogen. These systems exhibit the lowest heavy-element abundance in the early universe, and thus are potential fuel for the most metal-poor halo stars. The detection of deuterium in one system at the level predicted by primordial nucleosynthesis provides a direct confirmation of the standard cosmological model. The composition of these clouds further implies that the transport of heavy elements from galaxies to their surroundings is highly inhomogeneous.
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Science
Volume 334 | Issue 6060
2 December 2011

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Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Received: 5 September 2011
Accepted: 31 October 2011
Published in print: 2 December 2011

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Acknowledgments

We thank A. Aguirre, N. Lehner, and P. Madau for providing comments on this manuscript. We thank the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie at Heidelberg for their hospitality. J.X.P. acknowledges support from the Humboldt Foundation. Support for this work came from NSF grant AST0548180. We acknowledge the use of the VPFIT program. This work is based on observations made at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The authors recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. The data reported in this paper are available through the Keck Observatory Archive.

Authors

Affiliations

Michele Fumagalli* [email protected]
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
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John M. O'Meara
Department of Chemistry and Physics, Saint Michael's College, Colchester, VT, USA.
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J. Xavier Prochaska
University of California Observatories–Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA.
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Notes

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]

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