Recent simulations indicate that supernova explosions from the universe’s first stars disseminated essential materials for rocky planet formation as early as 100 million years post-Big Bang, revealing the presence of water in some planet-forming disks.
Artist’s depiction of a field of Population III stars emerging merely 100 million years after the Big Bang. Credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Spaceengine.
The first stars in the universe were massive and culminated their life cycles in dramatic explosions.
These events are known as Pop III Supernovae. These cataclysms released substantial amounts of chemical elements, crucial for planet formation, into surrounding gas clouds, including carbon, oxygen, and iron.
According to Dr. Daniel Whalen, an astrophysicist at the University of Portsmouth, “Our latest research indicates that the building blocks for terrestrial planets could develop around low-mass, long-lived stars formed from the debris of these early cosmic explosions, just 100 million years after the Big Bang.”
“To put it into context, the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, making this an incredibly early epoch in cosmic history.”
A specific type of Pop III supernova, known as an unstable supernova, can emit over 100 times the mass of the Sun in heavy elements through a single explosion.
This ejected material can lead to the formation of dense clouds rich in heavy elements.
Such clouds may collapse under gravitational forces, resulting in swirling disks of matter around young stars, mirroring the disk from which our solar system emerged.
“We found in our computer simulations one such disk surrounding a young star approximately 70% the mass of the Sun,” noted Dr. Whalen.
“This disk accumulated enough solid material to form several Earth masses’ worth of planets at a distance comparable to that between the Earth and the Sun.”
“Surprisingly, this disk also contained considerable amounts of water, albeit less than what was available during the formation of our own solar system.”
“This suggests that any planets developing in this environment might have accumulated water similarly to Earth, which is believed to have acquired much of its water from leftover material during its formation.”
“Our findings imply that the conditions necessary for planet formation may have existed much earlier than previously anticipated.”
“If confirmed, this raises an intriguing question: Could potentially habitable worlds have formed even earlier in the universe’s history?”
The team’s research paper will be published in the Astrophysics Letter Journal.
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Eduard I. Vorobyov et al. 2026. Planet Formation at the Dawn of the Universe: Planetesimals in H2O-Rich Disks around Low-Mass Stars. APJL in press. arXiv: 2501.08375
Source: www.sci.news
