00:00The Sun is the biggest thing around bar none, but out in the cosmos, especially way way
00:09back when the universe was still in its infancy, there were much larger stars.
00:13And now using the incredible abilities of the James Webb Space Telescope to effectively
00:17look back in time, we're finally getting evidence of those ancient behemoths.
00:21In the moments relatively shortly after the Big Bang, experts say there were stars that
00:25had masses upwards of 10,000 times that of the Sun.
00:28For reference, the most massive star ever found is called R136A1, and it has a mass
00:33only 300 times that of the Sun.
00:36So how do experts know they existed if they're not around anymore?
00:39Astronomers often look at clusters of stars in the Milky Way, which often contain very
00:42old stars with some elements that are surprising to find.
00:45These elements can only be explained by a star burning at an extremely high temperature
00:49for a period of time, with experts saying that could happen in the cores of supermassive
00:54stars.
00:55The James Webb Space Telescope was just pointed in the direction of galaxy GN-Z11, which is
00:59so far away, light from it takes 13.3 billion years to reach us.
01:04The data gave astronomers signs of a supermassive star lurking in that galaxy, meaning we might
01:08soon get an image from a distant star cluster showing us what a star 10,000 times the mass
01:13of the Sun actually looks like.
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