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In the beginning, God created heavens and earth. And the earth was without order and empty. And the darkness covered the surface of the abyss, and the Spirit of God moved on the surface of the waters. Then God said: Be the light. And there was light. Go if there was light.
A little context. Just after the Big Bang, the universe was an unimaginably dense and hot place. But as it expanded and cooled, the matter began to organize. First, protons and neutrons formed the nuclei of the lighter elements.
Three hundred eighty thousand years later, temperatures fell enough for electrons to join these nuclei, forming the first neutral atoms: mainly hydrogen and helium. And it was then, in that cosmic childhood, when chemistry was born.
The first molecule. The first chemical bond of the universe was the helium hydride ion (HEH+). A simple molecule formed by an atom of neutral helium and a hydrogen core; That is, a proton. For decades, his role in the birth of the first stars was subject to intense debates and theoretical simulations.
Now, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Germany has achieved recreate for the first time The reactions of this molecule in conditions similar to those of the primitive universe. The result has been a capital surprise that will force physicists to reconsider what they thought they knew about how the first lights lit.
The first stars. After the formation of neutral atoms, the universe entered into A period known as the “dark age”. There were still no objects that emitted light, such as stars. For a star to be born, a gas cloud had to contract until enough density and temperature to start the nuclear fusion. But there is a problem: for the cloud to contract until that point due to gravity, it needed to dissipate heat.
Below the 10,000 degrees Celsius, hydrogen atoms are not able to radiate that heat. This is where the molecules come into play. Helium hydride (heh+) can cool gas in a much more efficient way due to its strong dipole moment: it radiates heat emitting photons when rotating and vibrating.
Something does not fit. Physicists believed that HEH+ had been a key cooling agent in the primitive universe. The problem was that HEH+ could also be destroyed by colliding with the omnipresent hydrogen atoms. Until now, the theoretical models predicted that the destruction reaction had slowed down drastically due to the very low temperatures of the primitive universe, but no one had verified it experimentally.
The results of the experiment, published in the magazine Astronomy & AstrophysicsThey are completely unexpected. To the difference of all predictions, the reaction does not slow down at low temperatures. In fact, its speed remains almost constant. What physicists call a “reaction without barrier” occurs.
Image | NASA, that
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