HE 1523-0901 is older than the atoms in your body. This ancient star, about 13.2 billion years old, formed when the universe was still figuring itself out. To put that in perspective, hydrogen formed within minutes after the Big Bang, but heavier elements took hundreds of millions of years to appear. That means this star was already burning before the first galaxies fully formed. In a way, it’s a fossil of the early universe, still glowing after nearly all of time itself.
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