A schematic illustration of this research (IMAGE) National Institutes of Natural Sciences Caption Ejecta from the first supernovae (cyan, green, and purple objects surrounded by clouds of ejected material) enrich the primordial hydrogen and helium gas with heavy elements. If the first stars were born as multiple stellar systems, rather than as isolated single stars, elements ejected by different supernovae would be mixed together and incorporated into the next generation of stars. The characteristic chemical abundances in such a mechanism are preserved in the atmospheres of long-lived stars. The team invented a machine learning algorithm to distinguish between the observed stars (shown in red in the diagram) formed out of the ejecta of a single supernova and stars (shown in blue in the diagram) formed out of ejecta from multiple supernovae, based on measured elemental abundances from the spectra of the stars. Credit Kavli IPMU Usage Restrictions None License Original content Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.