  Here, we ask a simple question, i.e. "at what cosmic time, at the earliest,
did life first appear in the universe?" Given what we know about the universe
today, there may be some partial answers to this question, but much will still
have to be left to speculation. If life in general requires stars as its
primary energy source and uses elemental building blocks heavier than those
initially produced in a Big Bang scenario, first life could have appeared, when
the universe was considerably less than 0.1 billion years old. At that time,
heavy element producing hypernovae exploded at corresponding redshifts.}
$z$\,\gapprox\,45, significantly higher than commonly assumed ($z \approx 6$).
The recent discovery of a galaxy at $z > 9$ could provide supporting evidence
for the hypothesis of a very much shorter time scale than what is widely
believed.
