As a tweenage kid in the early 2010s, I had plenty of astronomy books, and the books said that Population III stars are hypothetical. Now, 10+ years later, we have found these stars? Pop III stars have far less metal inside their atmospheres compared to Population I stars such as
our sun, as metals have not yet been formed in the early universe.
This is the video summary, for those with little time to spare (I looked at the video CC transcript, cos I was impatient to learn, cos science is cool):
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) aims to find evidence of the first stars that formed in the universe, known as Population III stars. These stars are significant as they produced the first heavy elements and caused the re-ionization of the universe. Recently, researchers led by Maiolino have claimed to find evidence of Population III stars in a far away galaxy with the weird alphanumeric name of GN-z11. Before JWST's launch, the GN-z11 was the most distant galaxy known, with light taking 13.3 billion years to reach us. Researchers analyzed data from JWST and discovered a clump of helium gas glowing at a particular wavelength, indicating intense heat and ionization by something very energetic. This helium clump is located near GGN-z11 but not within it, suggesting it could be due to Population III stars or a growing supermassive black hole. However, models show that the energy emitted from a growing black hole would decrease rapidly with distance, making it unlikely. Therefore, the researchers believe Population III stars are ionizing the helium clump. If true, this would be the first direct evidence of these ancient stars. Further observations and analyses are needed to confirm this discovery.