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Illustration of water molecules in space. | Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser
This story was presented Live scienceSpace.com’s sisters site.
For the first time, the researchers restored the first molecules of the universe, imitating the conditions of the early universe.
Conclusions evoke our understanding of the origin of the stars in the early universe and “calls for re -evaluating helium chemistry in the early universe,” researchers wrote in a new study published on July 24. Astronomy and Astrophysics magazine.
The first stars in the universe
Just after the big explosion 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a particularly high temperature. However, after a few seconds, the temperature decreased sufficiently to make the hydrogen and helium form as the first elements considered. Hundreds of thousands of years after these elements were formed, the temperature has become cooler enough to combine their atoms with electrics in different different configurations, forging molecules.
According to the researchers, Helio Hidrid John – or HEH+ – became the first molecule. John is needed to form molecular hydrogen, now the most abundant molecule in the universe.
Both Helio Hydride ions and molecular hydrogen were very important for the first stars for hundreds of millions of years of hundreds of millions of years, the researchers said.
In order for the protostar to start fusion, the process that allows the stars to create its own energy – atoms and molecules must face each other and release heat. This process is essentially ineffective at the temperature of up to 18,000 degrees (10,000 degrees Celsius).
However, Helio Hidrid ions continue to continue the process, even at cool temperature, and are considered to be a potentially integral part of the star formation in the early universe.
Thus, the amount of Heli Hydride ions in the universe may have had a major influence on the speed and efficiency of the early star formation, the researchers said.
Far more important than thought before
In the new study, researchers restored the early reactions of Helio Hydride, holding the ions minus 449 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 267 degrees Celsius) to 60 seconds to cool them before they start to collide with heavy hydrogen. Researchers have investigated how the collisions are similar to those who blend in in the star, changing the temperature of the particles.
They found that the speed of the reaction between these particles would not exist at lower temperatures, which contradicts older assumptions.
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“Previous theories predicted a significant reduction in the likelihood of reaction at low temperatures, but we could not check it in the experiment or in new theoretical calculations,” said Holger Kreckel, co-author of the study, who is investigating nuclear physics at the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Germany.
This new conclusion is the challenge of Helio Hidrid ions, as physicists believe the stars have formed in the early universe. The reactions between the ions and other atoms “look much more important in chemistry in an early universe than that it is thought to be in the past,” Creckel said.