Scientists have found that water has existed in the Universe for much longer than previously thought. Spectroscopic studies show that this essential substance for life was already present in the very first galaxies.
How did water first form in the Universe?
Water may have first formed 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, according to modeling results published in the journal Nature Astronomy. The authors suggest that water formation may have occurred earlier in the Universe than previously thought and may have been a key component of the first galaxies.
Water is crucial to life as we know it, and its components, hydrogen and oxygen, were formed in different ways. Lighter chemical elements such as hydrogen, helium, and lithium were forged in the Big Bang, but heavier elements such as oxygen are the result of nuclear reactions within stars or supernova explosions. Thus, it is unclear when water began to form in the Universe.
Computer simulations
Researcher Daniel Whalen and his colleagues used computer models of two supernovae: one for a star 13 times the mass of the Sun, and another for a star 200 times the mass of the Sun, to analyze the products of these explosions. They found that 0.051 and 55 solar masses (where one solar mass is the mass of our Sun) of oxygen were created in the first and second simulations, respectively, due to the very high temperatures and densities achieved.
Whalen and his colleagues found that when this oxygen gas cooled and mixed with the surrounding hydrogen left behind by the supernovae, water formed in the remnants of the dense clots of material. These dense shapes were, in fact, the different forms of another generation of stars and planets.
Water production
In the first simulation, the authors found that 30 to 90 million years after the supernova flare, the mass of water reached a value equivalent to about one-hundredth to one-millionth of the solar mass. In the second simulation, the amount of water reached about 0.001 solar masses after 3 million years.
The authors suggest that if water could survive the formation of the first galaxies, a potentially devastating process, it could have been included in the formation of planets billions of years ago.
According to phys.org
