The most distant signs of oxygen ever detected have been pictured by scientists.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a group of astronomers detected a "clear signal" from SXDF-NB1006-2 galaxy located 13.1 billion light years away – the most distant oxygen ever detected.
The team say that the detection may be a "key step to understand the enigmatic 'cosmic reionisation' in the early history of the universe".
"Seeking heavy elements in the early universe is an essential approach to explore the star formation activity in that period," said Akio Inoue, lead author of the paper detailing the discovery.
"Studying heavy elements also gives us a hint to understand how the galaxies were formed and what caused the cosmic reionisation."
Cosmic reionisation refers to the ionisation of neutral gas that filled the early universe before the first stars formed. After this happened, the team say, the whole universe "changed dramatically".
But what actually caused the reionisation has been subject to great debate.
The team was unable to find any carbon emissions from the galaxy, however, meaning that something "unusual may be happening in this galaxy".
"I suspect that almost all the gas is highly ionised," Inoue said.
"This is the first step to understanding what kind of objects caused cosmic reionisation," explained Yoichi Tamura at the University of Tokyo.
"Our next observations with ALMA have already started. Higher resolution observations will allow us to see the distribution and motion of ionized oxygen in the galaxy and provide precious information to understand the properties of the galaxy."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
