Abundant water from primordial supernovae at cosmic dawn

[Astronuc]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02479-w, published 3 March 2025

Abstract:
Primordial (or population III) supernovae were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, and they forged the heavy elements required for the later formation of planets and life. Water, in particular, is thought to be crucial to the cosmic origins of life as we understand it, and recent models have shown that water can form in low-metallicity gas like that present at high redshifts. Here we present numerical simulations that show that the first water in the Universe formed in population III core-collapse and pair-instability supernovae at redshifts z ≈ 20. The primary sites of water production in these remnants are dense molecular cloud cores, which in some cases were enriched with primordial water to mass fractions that were only a factor of a few below those in the Solar System today. These dense, dusty cores are also probable candidates for protoplanetary disk formation. Besides revealing that a primary ingredient for life was already in place in the Universe 100–200 Myr after the Big Bang, our simulations show that water was probably a key constituent of the first galaxies.

It's those Population III stars again.

Undergrad Thread 'Population 3 star (Pop III) candidate LAP1'

Nov 12, 2025

"Pop III stars are thought to be composed entirely of helium and hydrogen with trace amounts of lithium, the ingredients left over after the Big Bang. They formed early on, around 200 million years after the universe began. These stars are extremely rare because they died out long ago, although scientists have hoped that the faint light from these distant, ancient objects would be detectable.

Previous Population III candidates have been ruled out because they didn't meet the three main predictions about their formation and properties."

This paper is claiming the main criteria have been...

• pinball1970
• Replies: 3
• Forum: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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See - 1000–10,000 M⊙ Primordial Stars Created the Nitrogen Excess in GS 3073 at z = 5.55

Post in thread 'The James Webb Space Telescope'

Feb 8, 2026

An article on giant (or monster) stars came to my attention. Astronomers have been looking at system GS 3073 with the JWST.

Cambridge, MA (December 9, 2025)— For two decades, astronomers have puzzled over how supermassive black holes, which are some of the brightest objects in the universe, could exist less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Normal stars simply couldn't create such massive black holes quickly enough.

Now, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has found the first compelling evidence that solves this cosmic...

• Astronuc

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In the abstract, one finds the statement, "GS 3073 is thus the first conclusive evidence in the fossil abundance record of the existence of supermassive Pop III stars at cosmic dawn." I didn't emphasize that point in that post!

Origin of the elements
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00159-022-00146-x


It's always good to go back to one's predictions and see how well observation verifies one's prediction(s).

Characterization of Population III Stars with Stellar Atmosphere and Evolutionary Modeling and Predictions of their Observability with the JWST, Published 2022 December 2
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac9b43

Abstract: Population III stars were the first stars to form after the Big Bang and are believed to have made the earliest contribution to the metal content of the universe beyond the products of the Big Bang nucleosynthesis. These stars are theorized to have had extremely short life spans and therefore would only be observable at high redshifts (z ≥ 3–17) and faint apparent magnitudes (mAB ≳ 40). The direct detection of Population III stars therefore remains elusive. However, the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be capable of detecting stars in the relevant magnitude range in the event of favorable gravitational lensing. Theoretical models are required to interpret these future observations. In this study, new evolutionary models and nonequilibrium model atmospheres were used to characterize the observable properties of zero-age main-sequence Population III stars. The calculated models cover a wide range of possible Population III stellar masses, from the minimum mass predicted by star formation studies to the maximum mass capable of maintaining hydrostatic equilibrium. Synthetic photometry and theoretical color–magnitude diagrams were calculated for the bands of the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the JWST. The final results are compared to the scales of known lensing events and JWST magnitude limits. The purpose of this study is to calculate the observable parameters of Population III stars in the most optimal JWST bands in order to provide a theoretical foundation for anticipated future observations of this stellar population.