I'm no astronomer but I believe that the first stars tended to be huge and short-lived. Is it surprising that there would have been supernova and heavy elements ejected from them that early?
We expected heavy elements from supernova. It’s surprising that there is 10x more heavy elements than expected. Were there more supernova? Bigger ones? Are we missing other pieces of the picture?
Is a single order of magnitude within a reasonable range of error for the calculation? Some cases that is a massive miss, but other cases that might be within the expected statistical range. In the former cases it implies something entirely missing, while the latter cases are more likely to be known uncertainties which can now be better refined.
Surprising in the sense that they have models and predictions putting out some number and this new measurement showed that they're not exactly correct. Could almost say business as usual when it comes to science like this.
