Researchers: Universe’s proposed first chemical detected for the first time

helium hydride ion/
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Helium hydride ion (HeH+) is believed to have first appeared 13.8 billion years ago, after the Big Bang but then was “lost in space”:

Hydrogen and helium were the two first elements, and in the universe’s extreme birth conditions astrochemists presumed they formed the first ever molecular bond in HeH+.. Rolf Güsten from the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Germany, and colleagues knew HeH+ can exist – it was spotted in the lab in 1925. But now, they have convincingly spied it in space for the first time, in a nebula that exists in the current universe.

‘The lack of evidence of HeH+ caused some doubts whether we do understand the formation and destruction of this special molecule as well as we thought,’ Güsten tells Chemistry World. ‘This concern is gone now.’Andy Extance, “Evidence found for elusive chemistry from the universe’s first minutes” at Chemistry World

Paper.

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See also: Hugh Ross: How recent measurements support the Big Bang theory Maybe the cosmologists who don’t like the theistic implications of the Big Bang can overthrow the current universe and appoint another one?

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