Astronomers reanalyzed the chemical composition of three stars in the Milky Way's halo and found that they are between 12 and 13 billion years old. They may have also been stolen from other galaxies.

The stars, about 30,000 light-years from Earth, are in the galaxy's "halo," the cloud of stars surrounding the main galactic disk in space, and are estimated to have formed about 12 to 13 billion years ago. That would place their births shortly after the Big Bang, which scientists believe happened some 13.8 billion years ago.

Three of the oldest known stars in the universe were found in the Milky Way’s main galactic disk. They likely formed billions of years ago when the very first galaxies were taki

Three stars circling the Milky Way’s halo formed 12 to 13 billion years ago. MIT researchers, including several undergraduate students, have discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they happen to live in our own galactic neighborhood.

These oldest stars should definitely be there, given what we know of galaxy formation,” MIT professor of physics Anna Frebel explained in a press statement. “They are part