The primitive universe could have been wetter than was thought. According to a new study published in Nature Astronomythe water in the universe would have formed before what was believed. According to this new report, only between 100 and 200 million years after the Big Bang would have given the conditions for water formation in the first galaxies.
There has always been uncertainty about when water could appear in the universe. The reason is that it is formed by atoms, specifically hydrogen and oxygen, which originated in very different ways, according to experts. Hydrogen, in fact, is one of the lighter elements of the periodic table and, together with the helium, was formed during the Big Bang itself. Heavier elements, such as oxygen, on the other hand, they were formed later, since they are the result of nuclear reactions that took place inside the stars or during supernova explosions.
Protoestrellas simulations
In his last work, the scientist Daniel Whamen and his colleagues from the University of Portsmouth, the United Kingdom, argue that things could be different: through a computer simulation they managed to observe the behavior of two original stars, one of 13 solar masses and another of 200, in the conditions in which the universe could be in its beginnings. According to recent data acquired by the James Webb space telescope, these first stars, mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, were extremely hot and were quickly consumed, which is why there are hardly any traces of them.
After analyzing the products of their explosions, the researchers discovered that the possibility that water originated was already present 100 million years after the Big Bang. The models showed that the temperature and pressure of these primitive supernovae would have been enough to generate oxygen. Specifically, the two simulations threw 0.051 and 55 solar masses of gas oxygen.
The gases would have expanded when cooling and the oxygen attached to the molecular hydrogen that left the explosion of the supernova. The water, therefore, could have been formed within dense clusters of matter, the same that would have constituted the places of formation of the second generation of stars and planets. “Our simulations suggest that the water was present in the primal galaxies due to their previous training in their constituent halos,” the researchers point out in the article. And, according to the calculations of the scientific team, the amount of water in the original galaxies could have been only ten times less than the one estimated that there is today in our galaxy. One of the main ingredients of life, therefore, would have been wide a long time.
Article published in Wired Italy. Adapted by José Carlos Oliva.
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