system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How long after the Big Bang did the first supernovas happen?

Was it shortly after stars formed? Or was it millions of years later?
gpt
Don't forget, in astronomical terms, millions of years later *is* "shortly" :) The first stars are thought to have formed roughly 100 millon years after the Big Bang. These would most likely have been incredibly massive, a few hundred times or even a thousand times more massive than the Sun. Stars this massive can't form today, because the clouds that form stars are filled with heavy elements that quickly cool the gas as it collapses. But these heavy elements were created by stars, so the first stars had no such impediment.

The more massive a star is, the shorter its lifespan - a dim red star, less massive than the Sun, will have a lifetime longer than the present age of the Universe, lifespans of tens of billions of years or longer, while these extremely massive first stars would have only been able to survive for a few million years. So the answer to both of your questions is yes - the first supernovae happened very shortly after the first stars formed, only a few million years later :)