Water was probably 'abundant' in first billion years of universe

 

 

Researchers at the Tel Aviv University and Harvard University have revealed that the universe's first reservoirs of water may have formed much earlier than previously thought - less than a billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 5 percent of its current age.

 

According to the study, led by PhD student Shmuel Bialy and his advisor Prof. Amiel Sternberg at TAU, the timing of the formation of water in the universe has important implications for the question of when life itself originated.

 

Bialy said that their theoretical model predicted that significant amounts of water vapor could form in molecular clouds in young galaxies, even though these clouds bear thousands of times less oxygen than that in our own galaxy today. This was very surprising and raised important questions about the habitability of the first planets, because water has been the key component of life.

 

They examined chemical reactions that led to the formation of water within the oxygen-poor environment of early molecular clouds, and found that at temperatures around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, the formation process became very efficient, and in the gas phase abundant water could form despite the relative lack of raw materials.

 

Because ultraviolet light from stars breaks down water molecules, an equilibrium between water formation and destruction could only be reached after hundreds of millions of years. he team found that the equilibrium in the early universe was similar to that measured in the universe today.

 

The study is due to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.