Found: Distant Reservoir of Water

In a quasar more than 12 billion light-years away from Earth, astronomers have found the largest—not to mention the most distant—reservoir of water yet discovered in the universe. It is thought to contain 140 trillion times the amount of water in all our oceans.

Quasars, powered by black holes, are objects which emit massive amounts of energy. As the black hole feasts on a disk of gas and dust that surrounds it, called an accretion disk, the quasar spews out energy.

Also, quasars tend to dwell in the most distant edges of the universe. They have large red shifts, meaning that they are moving away from us due to the expansion of the universe. Therefore, they were created early on in the history of the universe. Astronomers are excited about this latest discovery which can indicate what conditions were like at the beginning of the universe.

The quasar, named APM 08279+5255, was found with the 33-foot Z-Spec telescope at the California Institute of Technology’s Submillimeter Observatory, located near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Observations were initially made in 2008, and measurements showed a large amount of water vapor surrounding the quasar. According to a NASA news release, astronomers had expected to find water vapor in the distant reaches of the universe, but they simply had not detected it before.

An artist's concept of a quasar similar to APM 08279+5255 (Image: NASA)