According to the results of one of the latest scientific studies, the whole Universe at a certain point in its time could be an incubator of life. This conclusion, or rather an assumption, came from researchers at Harvard University, who believe that in the early moments of the Universe, when the first stars had just formed, life could exist on almost any planet.
In the framework of previous studies on this topic, it was suggested that even the simplest life forms could not develop around young stars for the most various reasons. One of them, for example, is the gigantic size of such objects and the huge amount of radiation background that they radiated. And so on ...
Nevertheless, a new study under the leadership of the Harvard astrophysicist Abraham Loeb suggests that the planets that appeared around the stars in the first 15 million years after the Big Bang could contain water, which would imply the presence of habitable zones in almost the entire Universe.
Loeb believes that the heat and energy required to ensure that water remains in liquid form would be provided by cosmic microwave background radiation (relic light left after the Big Bang). The radiation is now very thin, but still quite strong in some areas of the Universe.
The temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation is now 2.7 Kelvin. However, when the universe was only 15 million years old, the background radiation heated up everything that exists within it to 300 kelvins (26.85 degrees Celsius).
According to Harvard scientists, it was during this period of time that rocky exoplanets could form in isolated corners of the Universe, the so-called pockets - an area of space where there was a denser concentration of matter. Some astrophysicists believe that this development is impossible due to the fact that time is limited: for several million years, heavier elements like hydrogen and helium could not form in these pockets. Nevertheless, in his study Loeb and his team tried to show this possibility.
Scientists believe that in its embryonic state, lasting from 2 to 3 million years, life could indeed exist in the universe. At this time, the planets were able to maintain the presence of water in liquid form on their surface, even if they were outside the habitable zones of their native stars.
The scientific journal Nature reports that the full details of this study were published in the largest free archive of electronic publications arXiv.org.
The article is based on materials .
Comments
Post a Comment