Water may have appeared in the universe much earlier than scientists – and that could mean life could also be billions of years older, according to new research.
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Water is one of the most essential ingredients for life as we know it. But exactly when water first appeared has been a question of scientific interest for decades.
Now, new research suggests that water likely existed 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang — billions of years earlier than scientists previously thought. The research was published March 3 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The early universe was dry because it was mostly filled with very simple elements, such as hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Heavier elements did not develop until the first stars formed, burned through their fuel stores, and eventually exploded. Such stellar explosions, known as supernovae, acted like pressure cookers that combined lighter elements into increasingly heavier ones.
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To determine when water first appeared, researchers looked at the earliest supernovae, called Population III. Astrophysicist Daniel Whalen and his team looked at models of two types of these early stellar remnants: core-collapse, when a large star collapses under its own mass, and pair-instability, when a star's internal pressure suddenly drops, causing a partial collapse.
The researchers found that shortly after the Big Bang, both types of supernovae produced dense clumps of gas that likely contained water.
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Overall, the amount of water in these gas clouds was probably very small – but it was concentrated in the regions where planets and stars were most likely to form, the team found. The first galaxies likely emerged from these regions, meaning water may have already been in the mix when they formed.
Source: livescience
