I am a begineer, unable to run a very simple android app on emulator : I am new to Android app development.

I created a new a project on Android Studio, which can run on Ice cream sandwich and later versions.

Just added one activity : "Basic activiy" from the list of activities.
Then tried to run the app on emulator Nexus 5x.

But the app did not run, and the gradle build shows 61 errors.

I am listing some of the errors below:

Error:java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/android/dx/command/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)

Error:java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/android/dx/command/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800)

Error:	at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)

Error:	at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:449)

Error:	at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:71)

Error:	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)

Error:	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)

Error:	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)

Error:	at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:425)

Error:	at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)

Error:	at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:482)

Error:Exception in thread "main" 

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:800)

Error:	at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)

Error:	at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)

Error:	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)

Error:	at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper.checkAndLoadMain(LauncherHelper.java:482)

Error:Exception in thread "main" 

Error:Execution failed for task ':app:transformClassesWithDexForDebug'.
> com.android.build.api.transform.TransformException: java.lang.RuntimeException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: org.gradle.process.internal.ExecException: Process 'command 'C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_79\bin\java.exe'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

I don't understand what these errors mean.

Would be grateful if someone can help me out.