An international team of researchers, among them scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has confirmed the primitive origen of an old star in the Milky Way, using the ESPRESSO instrument. The stars with the least content of metals are considered to be the oldest in the Milky Way, formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which is a small fraction of the age of the universe. These stars are “living fossils” whose chemical composition gives clues about the first stages of the evolution of the universe. The star SMSS1605-1443 was discovered in 2018 and

A team of researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of Manchester and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have detected an anomalously high lithium abundance in the atmosphere of the companion star of a binary millisecond pulsar. The lithium abundance is higher compared to stars with the same effective temperature and high-metallicity stars and so the study provides unambiguous evidence for fresh lithium production. Lithium is a fragile element and in stars similar to the Sun it is gradually destroyed in the interiors via low-temperature