Research results suggest that life may have been born immediately after the Big Bang when a large amount of 'water' overflowed during an early supernova explosion
Although water is now abundant in the universe, most of the matter in the universe immediately after the Big Bang was born was hydrogen and helium. Therefore, it is thought that for there to be enough water for life to exist, we had to wait until oxygen was gradually produced through a process called
[2501.02051] Abundant Water from Early Supernovae at Cosmic Dawn
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02051
The First Supernovae Flooded the Early Universe With Water - Universe Today
https://www.universetoday.com/170448/the-first-supernovae-flooded-the-early-universe-with-water/
1st supernovas may have flooded the early universe with water — making life possible just 100 million years after the Big Bang | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/1st-supernovas-may-have-flooded-the-early-universe-with-water-making-life-possible-just-100-million-years-after-the-big-bang
In astronomy, all elements other than hydrogen and helium are collectively called metals, and stars are classified based on their metallicity and age into three categories: 'Population I' stars, which are young stars with a high metallic content like the Sun; 'Population II' stars, which are relatively old stars with little metallic content ; and 'Population III' stars, which are the first generation of stars in the universe that contain almost no metals.
In a study published on the preprint server arXiv on January 9, 2025, Daniel Warren and his team at the University of Portsmouth in the UK conducted a numerical simulation of a supernova explosion in a Population III star with a mass between 13 and 200 times that of the Sun.
When a relatively small star with a mass of around 13 solar masses reaches the end of its life, it typically ends up in a core-collapse supernova , whereas when a massive star with a mass of around 200 solar masses dies, it ends up in a pair instability supernova, which releases a huge amount of energy.
Crucially, the simulations show that when these first stars exploded, dense clouds of elements such as hydrogen and oxygen formed in their remains. These dense molecular clouds contained large amounts of water, in some cases up to 30 times denser than the water floating around in our galaxy today, the team reports.
'Our simulations reveal that the main ingredients of life were already present in the universe 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang, and suggest that water was likely a major component of the first galaxies,' the team wrote in their paper.
Another previously published paper has shown that carbon may have been present 350 million years after the Big Bang, and these research results suggest that the building blocks for life may have been present in the universe earlier than previously assumed.
Carbon was born just 350 million years after the Big Bang, a big step towards the origin of life - GIGAZINE
The biggest challenge in this simulation study is that no Population III stars have yet been observed. The first stars born shortly after the Big Bang have a short lifespan, and to find very old stars one must observe the distant Universe, so it remains a mystery what the primordial stars that produced the matter that makes up the Universe today looked like.
In addition, if the results of the study that such a large amount of water was produced in early supernova explosions are true, the universe today should be full of even more water. Therefore, it is thought that there may have been a 'dry period' in the history of the universe where water was broken down by astrophysical processes such as ionization, but it is unclear what the fate of the water produced immediately after the Big Bang was, and of any life that may have arisen within it.
'It remains unclear how much water survived the harsh radiation environment of the first galaxy,' the team wrote at the end of their paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.
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in Science, Posted by log1l_ks