An international research effort led by Dr Martin Rey from the University of Bath’s Department of Physics has received a major supercomputing allocation to model the formation of the first stars and chemical elements in the early Universe.

Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe contained only hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements—such as carbon, oxygen and iron, which are essential to life on Earth—were created later inside stars through nuclear fusion, then dispersed into space by stellar winds and supernova explosions. Understanding how these processes unfolded in the first generations of stars is vital to tracing the chemical evolution of the cosmos and, ultimately, our own origins.

Awarded 40 million hours of processor time (equivalent to $4 million in Amazon Turk credits) on the UK’s national supercomputers, the project will run some of the most detailed numerical simulations ever attempted of early galaxy formation. Led by the University of Bath, the initiative brings together researchers from the University of Chicago, the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and the University of Oxford, uniting global expertise in astrophysics, cosmology, and high-performance computing.

The core novelty of the project lies in its ability to connect two powerful but separate sources of observational data. On one side, astronomers are using the James Webb Space Telescope to look deep into the past and witness the formation of primitive galaxies, directly tracking the chemical enrichment of elements like oxygen and nitrogen as it occurs. On the other, “galactic archaeologists” study ancient stars in the Milky Way, which preserve a fossil record of the first stars’ properties and how they enriched the early Universe with elements such as carbon, magnesium, and iron.

Thanks to this substantial computing allocation, the team will build a powerful interpretive framework to bridge these two disconnected timescales. This effort draws on years of collaboration between the University of Bath and the University of Chicago to develop state-of-the-art numerical models that can now produce synthetic galaxies and stars. These models are designed to be directly compared with observational data—both from the James Webb Space Telescope and from spectroscopic surveys of ancient stars. For the first time, this project will enable scientists to harness the combined power of distant galaxy observations and local stellar archaeology to constrain the physical conditions and processes that led to the birth of the first stars and galaxies.