Water is older than we originally thought and may form an important component of the first galaxy

According to a modeling paper published in Nature Astronomy, water may have first formed 100-20 million years after Big Bang. The authors suggest that water formation may have occurred in space earlier than previously thought, and may have been a key component of the first galaxy.

As we know, water is extremely important to life, and its components, fudrogen and oxygen, are known to have been formed in a variety of ways. Light chemical elements such as hydrogen, helium and lithium have been forged into big bangs, whereas heavy elements such as oxygen are the result of nuclear reactions in star or supernova explosions. Therefore, it is unknown when water begins to form in space.

Researcher Daniel Warren and colleagues used computer models of two supernovae. It was first used on stars 13 times the mass of the sun and 13 times the mass of the sun, 200 times the mass of the sun, and analyzed the products of these explosions. They found that the solar masses of 0.051 and 55 of oxygen (one solar mass is the mass of the sun) reached very high temperatures and density, and were created in the first and second simulations, respectively.

Whalen and colleagues discovered that when the oxygen in this gas is cooled and mixed with the surrounding hydrogen left by the supernova, water forms in the dense mass of remaining material. These masses could be sites for the formation of second generation stars and planets.

In the first simulation, the authors found that mass water reaches an amount equivalent to approximately 100 million to one-million solar masses in 30-90 million years of a supernova. In the second simulation, the amount of water reached a solar mass of about 0.001 after 3 million years.

The authors suggest that if water could withstand the formation of the first galaxy, a potentially destructive process, it could have been incorporated into the formation of planets billions of years ago.