What does it mean to discover oxygen outside the Milky Way for the first time?

Or it can become a new tool to study celestial bodies such as supermassive black holes in the universe.

Previously, astronomers only detected oxygen twice in the Orion Nebula and Ophiuchus Nebula. After calculation, the oxygen content is much lower than the discovery of Ursa major.

Why is it so difficult to find oxygen in interstellar space between stars? Astronomers generally believe that oxygen atoms are "frozen" on dust particles by water molecules in interstellar space in the form of water ice. But in some nebulae, shock waves from bright newborn stars will strip water ice from dust and "save" oxygen atoms to form oxygen. Therefore, Wang Junzhi believes that the observation of oxygen can also be used as a tool to study the changes of stars, black holes and other celestial bodies in nebulae, especially the feedback of supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies to host galaxies.

Paul Goldsmith, a member of the research team and an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, pointed out that in the Orion Nebula, the content of oxygen is very small, only one millionth of that of hydrogen. This time, in "Makarian 23 1", the proportion of oxygen is 0/00 times that in Orion nebula. Therefore, it can be inferred that "Makarian 23 1" experienced a more powerful oxygen formation process than Orion Nebula. Previous studies have shown that "Makarian 23 1" is a high-yield star factory, and the speed of generating new stars is 100 times that of the Milky Way, and the total mass of gas ejected every year is 700 solar masses, which is more active for the shock wave of water ice. The discovery of oxygen also confirmed this conclusion.