A new study suggests that water first appeared in the universe just a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang, meaning life may have emerged billions of years earlier than previously thought.
Water is one of the most important ingredients for life as we know it. But when exactly water first appeared has been a subject of scientific interest for decades.
Now, a new study suggests that water likely existed 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang — billions of years earlier than scientists previously predicted. The study was published March 3, 2025, in the journal Nature Astronomy.
An illustration of a water planet in the early universe. New research suggests that the first water molecules in space may have formed billions of years earlier than previously thought. NASA
The early universe was dry because it was mostly made up of very simple elements like hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Heavier elements didn’t evolve until the first stars formed, burned through their fuel, and eventually exploded. These stellar explosions, known as supernovae, acted as pressure cookers that fused lighter elements into ever heavier ones.
“Oxygen forged in the depths of these supernovae combines with hydrogen to form water, paving the way for the creation of the basic elements needed for life,” Daniel Whalen, an astrophysicist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, said in a statement.
To determine when water first formed, the researchers looked at the oldest supernovae, called Population III supernovae. Whalen and his team considered models for two types of these early stellar remnants: core-collapse supernovae, where a large star collapses under its own mass; and pair-instability supernovae, where a star’s internal pressure suddenly drops, causing a partial collapse.
The researchers found that shortly after the Big Bang, both types of supernovae produced dense clumps of gas that likely contained water.
Overall, the amount of water in these gas clouds was likely quite small — but it was concentrated in the regions where planets and stars were most likely to form, the team says. The earliest galaxies likely arose from these regions, meaning water may have already been in the mix when they formed.
“This means that the conditions needed for life to form existed much earlier than we ever imagined – a significant step forward in our understanding of the early universe,” Whalen said.
Observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, which is designed to observe the oldest stars in the universe, could help further confirm these results.
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