Whalen D J, Latif M A, Jessop C
Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Portsmouth University, Portsmouth, UK.
Physics Department, College of Science, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, UAE.
Nat Astron. 2025;9(5):741-746. doi: 10.1038/s41550-025-02479-w. Epub 2025 Mar 3.
Primordial (or population III) supernovae were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, and they forged the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets and life. Water, in particular, is thought to be crucial to the cosmic origins of life as we understand it, and recent models have shown that water can form in low-metallicity gas like that present at high redshifts. Here we present numerical simulations that show that the first water in the Universe formed in population III core-collapse and pair-instability supernovae at redshifts ≈ 20. The primary sites of water production in these remnants are dense molecular cloud cores, which in some cases were enriched with primordial water to mass fractions that were only a factor of a few below those in the Solar System today. These dense, dusty cores are also probable candidates for protoplanetary disk formation. Besides revealing that a primary ingredient for life was already in place in the Universe 100-200 Myr after the Big Bang, our simulations show that water was probably a key constituent of the first galaxies.
原初（或第III族）超新星是宇宙中的首批核合成引擎，它们锻造了行星和生命后期形成所需的重元素。特别是水，据我们所知，它被认为对生命的宇宙起源至关重要，最近的模型表明，水可以在高红移时存在的低金属丰度气体中形成。在此，我们展示了数值模拟结果，表明宇宙中的首批水形成于红移约为20的第III族核心坍缩超新星和对不稳定超新星中。这些遗迹中产生水的主要场所是致密的分子云核，在某些情况下，这些核中富含原初水，其质量分数仅比当今太阳系中的低几倍。这些致密的尘埃云核也是原行星盘形成的可能候选者。除了揭示在大爆炸后1亿至2亿年，宇宙中生命的一种主要成分就已存在之外，我们的模拟还表明，水可能是首批星系的关键组成部分。
