All but one of the giant balls of hydrogen and helium known as stars, appear to us on Earth as pinpricks of light filling the night sky. Astronomers well understand the nature of these objects, how they are powered by the process of fusion and how they evolve over their lifetimes of several billion years.
But recently, astrophysicists have suggested that the first stars could have been quite different. Instead of fusion power, these objects may have been heated by the annihilation of dark matter.
So-called Dark Stars would be hugely different to the stars we see today. But they have never been seen, not least because the universe’s earliest light is too dim and distant to be observed.
