The universe might have been hospitable for life 500 million years earlier than we thought, according to researchers at the University of Texas in Austin.
The earliest galaxies probably initially consisted only of dark matter haloes and primordial hydrogen and helium gas. Massive amounts of UV radiation at the time should in theory have suppressed the formation of the very first stars. This meant many of life’s building blocks, such as carbon, oxygen, silicon and iron, could not be dispersed via stellar supernova explosions until later.
However, in their computer simulations, the researchers were surprised to find that these galaxies…
