Two articles, one published in “The Astrophysical Journal” and one in “Nature Astronomy”, report as many studies on molecules detected in the early universe thanks to the ALMA radio telescope. A team led by astronomer Sreevani Jarugula of the University of Illinois, USA, detected the presence of water in the galaxy SPT0311-58, about 12.88 billion light-years from Earth, the farthest ever detected in a galaxy without an active galactic nucleus. A team led by Maximilien Franco of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, detected the presence of hydrofluoric acid in the galaxy NGP–190387, about 12 billion light-years from Earth. In this case, the discovery is also important because the mechanisms of fluorine production are not very clear, and detecting their presence when the universe was about 1.4 billion years old indicates that the so-called Wolf-Rayet stars must be an important source of this element.