Astronomers Find Water in the Most Distant Place Ever
Water is one of the major components of life as we know it. This means that once you find the colorless and odorless substance in another world, there are at least some theoretical chances to find life forms there as well.
According to SciTechDaily.com, new observations made due to the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveal the existence of water in a very distant galaxy.
SPT0311-58 is located almost 13 billion light-years ago
SPT0311-58 is the galaxy in question that contains water, and it’s located at a staggering distance of 12.88 billion light-years away from us. This means that the galaxy has been around at less than a billion years after the Big Bang.
SPT0311-58 was first seen back in 2017. The weird thing is that the cosmic object actually represents two galaxies at once. The larger one seems to have captured the attention of astronomers more.
Sreevani Jarugula, who is an astronomer from the University of Illinois and also the main investigator for the new research, declared as quoted by SciTechDaily.com:
This galaxy is the most massive galaxy currently known at high redshift, or the time when the Universe was still very young. It has more gas and dust compared to other galaxies in the early Universe, which gives us plenty of potential opportunities to observe abundant molecules and to better understand how these life-creating elements impacted the development of the early Universe.
Of course, astronomers are still far from declaring that they’ve found life forms elsewhere in the Universe. But it’s great to see that substances that are crucial for the existence of life are also found on other cosmic objects except for the Earth.
We’re eager to find out how the new discovery will impact the astronomical community. Finding water at such a distant place also means that the substance existed when our Universe was incredibly young.
Tommy’s hobby has always been playing video games. He enjoys competing in video games tournaments and writing about his experience. It’s not a big surprise that he mostly covers the latest trends from the gaming industry.
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