Water is an essential part of life on Earth, and possibly elsewhere – and now it we know it may have formed not long after the start of the universe

“Before the first stars exploded, there was no water in the Universe because there was no oxygen,” said Daniel Whalen, a cosmologist at the University of Portsmouth and lead author of the study. “Only very simple nuclei survived the Big Bang—hydrogen, helium, lithium, and trace amounts of barium and boron.”

Scientists from the University of Portsmouth have discovered that water was already present in the Universe 100-200 million years after the Big