Thanks! I've replaced the overstated title with what seems to be a better phrase from the first paragraph. If there's a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.
The "isotope" part is a mistake in the article. The writers heard "He II" and very reasonably wrote down "helium-2", and added some exposition about that (hypothetical) nuclear isotope. But they're in fact unrelated things: "He II" in this context is an ionization state of helium (the +1 state) -- not an isotope. What the research is observing is high-energy radiation from stars stripping electrons from helium atoms. No rare isotopes in sight!
Also, spectra don't vary significantly by isotope - even with deuterium the difference is fractions of a nanometer of wavelength, which is not something detectable in astronomical spectra.
Yes, authors of articles rarely get to choose the headline, at most, they can suggest one. The editors choose the headline and often their motivation is to maximize clicks.
Ars Technica in particular sometimes uses A/B testing, randomly giving readers one of two headlines to see which one generates more clickthroughs (they've been transparent about that, there was an article describing it).
Hello! Author here (for real). Yes I didn't have much say in the headline but I'm fine with it, it's technically what the authors of the paper I covered were saying.
And thanks, hope you enjoyed the article! Regardless of whether this result stands up to scrutiny, I think this was a nice jumping off point to explain Pop III stars, and some of the interesting work JWST is doing here that people are probably not aware of (eg the programs mentioned at the end of the article).
