Astronomers have detected carbon in a galaxy observed just 350m years after the big bang, in observations that raise the possibility that the conditions for life were present almost from the dawn of time.
The observations, made by the James Webb space telescope, suggest that vast amounts of carbon were released when the first generation of stars exploded in supernovae. Carbon is known to have seeded the first planets and is a building block for life as we know it, but was previously thought to have emerged much later in cosmic history.
“This is the earliest detection of an element heavier than hydrogen ever obtained,”
said Prof Roberto Maiolino, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and a co-author of the findings.
“It’s a massive discovery.”
“The finding of a large amount of carbon in such a distant galaxy implies that life could have potentially emerged very early in the universe, really close to cosmic dawn.”
“The very first stars are the holy grail of chemical evolution, since they are made only of primordial elements, and they behave very differently to modern stars,”
said Dr Francesco D’Eugenio, an astrophysicist the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge and the lead author of the findings.
“By studying how and when the first metals formed inside stars, we can set a time frame for the earliest steps on the path that led to the formation of life.”
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Some View on the World 