Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water
By Elvira Veksler | July 23, 2011 11:09 AM EDT
Astronomers found a reservoir of water measuring 140 trillion times the earth's ocean water in space. The reservoir of water is the most distant ever discovered in the universe, said two teams of researchers.
The water surrounds a giant feeding black hole called a "quasar" and is located more than 12 billion light-years away. The giant black hole powers the quasar which gradually counsumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust. It also emits enormous amounts of energy.
Astronomers studied a quasar named APM 08279+5255, where the black hole is 20 billion times greater than the sun and discovered water vapor around the black hole extending hundreds of light-years in size.
NASA scientist Matt Bradford said, "The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water. It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times."
The water was discovered by Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at Caltech using the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps.
"[The finding] is another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times," said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
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