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" Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile have announced the most distant detection of oxygen yet: in a galaxy located 13.07 billion light-years away.  The galaxy, SXDF-NB1006-2, is one of the farthest galaxies ever discovered. It was first spotted in 2012 by the Subaru telescope operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, which works by detecting light from ionized hydrogen. The ALMA team attempted something similar, only with ionized oxygen instead of hydrogen.  By trying to detect oxygen in distant galaxies, the ALMA scientists hope to learn more about star formation in the early universe. Current evidence suggests that sometime in the first several hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe went through a process called cosmic reionization. During cosmic reionization, the first light-emitting objects ionized the electrically neutral clouds of gas that made up most of the matter in the universe at the time.  Cosmic reionization shook up the whole universe, and enabled galaxies, stars, and planets to form. But we still don&amp;#039;t really know how it started, and observing very distant galaxies like SXDF-NB1006-2 could help us find an answer.  The scientists have found that the ionized oxygen is due to the presence of several very large stars, dozens of times heavier than the Sun. Furthermore, there is only about a tenth of the amount of oxygen in SXDF-NB1006-2 than currently exists in our galaxy, even less dust, and zero carbon. The low concentrations of dust and carbon are crucial for reionization to occur, because they allow the light from the early stars to reach further into intergalactic space.  Follow-up experiments will attempt to take higher resolution observations to uncover exactly how the ionized oxygen is distributed within the galaxy, which will provide more answers on reionization in\u00A0the early universe. The further and further we&amp;#039;re able to see, the closer we get to understanding the\u00A0beginning of everything in existence.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/news/a21383/scientists-spot-the-most-distant-ever-oxygen-in-the-universe/>