Scientists Discover Oldest Oxygen Ever Found

A team of scientists has discovered traces of oxygen in a galaxy located billions of years away. To be precise, the galaxy in which the oldest molecule of oxygen has been discovered is located 13.1 billion light years away.

According to reports, the galaxy observed by the researchers, called SXDF-NB1006-2, shows the oldest signs of oxygen that anyone has ever observed in the past. The galaxy is expected to reveal key details about the life-giving molecules that helped with the formation of life.

It is a known fact that just after the Big Bang, only lighter elements such as lithium, hydrogen and helium existed in the universe. Carbon and oxygen, the elements necessary for the formation of life, appeared later. However, these elements could not appear until any of the stars had aged enough to produce these elements through nuclear fusion.

It was discovered in 2012 that SXDF-NB1006-2 was the oldest and most distant galaxy even observed. It was first observed by the Subaru Telescope because of the glow of its young stars. The glow was initially thought to be a result of the ionized hydrogen.

However, it was later observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope that the glow also came from ionized hydrogen. The galaxy, however, does not contain much oxygen. In fact, it has only 10 percent of what Earth's sun possesses.

According to study author Naoki Yoshida of the University of Tokyo, the small abundance of oxygen is probably because the universe was still young then and the history of star formation was comparatively small. However, the researchers discovered that it also had only a small amount of dust.

The researchers, therefore, believe that studying galaxies like SXDF-NB1006-2 can help figure about the mystery behind the dark ages of the universe.

The complete details of the study have been published in the journal Science.