Fabled Red Dwarf

This artwork is a visual representation of the 2MASS J18082002−5104378 (abbreviated J1808−5104) star. While reading the book called “A History of the Universe in 100 Stars” by F. Freistetter, this specific star fascinated me with its incredible story: “it’s one of the oldest known stars- perhaps even the oldest. It was born just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang” and it “allows us a brief glimpse of the beginning of the universe”. 

The question “How was our universe created?” troubled scientists for a very long time and, with the help of stars such as J1808−5104, the human race finally has some scientifically backed up theories for the Big Bang theory: ,, After the Big Bang, then, the protons and neutrons only had a few minutes to find each other and fuse into nuclei, which is too little time for a complex nucleus to form. In the early universe there was thus an abundance of hydrogen nuclei (c. 75 per cent), somewhat less helium (c. 25 per cent), and here and there individual lithium and beryllium nuclei in vanishingly small numbers. At least, this is what current cosmological theories about the Big Bang tell us about the ratio of chemical elements."

"We can only verify this through observation - for example by examining very old stars: the ones that were formed first in the universe can obviously only consist of the elements around at the time, i.e. hydrogen and helium, and in the aforementioned ratio. (...), so the older the star the more closely its composition has to match the ratio of masses present after the Big Bang. And that is precisely what we have been able to observe: 2MASS J18082002-5104378 B (...) as predicted consists almost exclusively of hydrogen and helium, in exactly the expected ratio.“