Far, far away. Really. Specifically, about 12 billion light years away in a remote corner of the universe, there’s a reservoir with an unimaginable amount of water.
140 trillion. It’s a key number. Back in 2011, NASA scientists found that the reservoir contains 140 trillion times more water than the volume of all the oceans on Earth put together. The reservoir is the biggest and most distant ever discovered in the universe.
The colossal reserve orbits a quasar whose light reaches us from a moment shortly after the Big Bang. "It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” Matt Bradford, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at the time.
A supermassive black hole. The quasar, known as “APM 08279+5255,” surrounds a black hole 20 billion times bigger than the Sun. In essence, this means that it produces as much energy as a trillion Suns.
This central black hole attracts surrounding matter, heating the gas and dust until it creates a region full of molecules that had never been detected at such a distance. Water vapor is one of those molecules, and its presence indicates that the quasar is emitting radiation because it maintains the surrounding gas relatively warm.
An artist illustration of a quasar similar to APM 08279+5255.
What are quasars? These objects were first spotted in the late 1950s. At that time, telescopes revealed mysterious sources of intense light in distant areas of space. Quasars shine brilliantly from the center of remote galaxies, eclipsing all of the stars of their galaxy.
At their core, quasars contain supermassive black holes whose masses are millions or even billions more than the Sun. As gas and dust move in a spiral towards the black hole, they both heat up and release energy. This energy shines across all wavelengths, which makes quasars of the most luminous and energic phenomena of the cosmos.
What made this quasar special? With its discovery, astronomers learned that water vapor could extend itself across a quasar, a region spanning hundreds of light years in diameter. Considering that a light year is equivalent to 9 trillion kilometers, there’s no other water reserve so massive and distant.
This extraordinary reservoir is made possible by the unusual conditions of its surroundings: the gas is five times hotter and hundreds of times denser than that in typical galaxies. Astronomers also detected other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, which suggests that there’s abundant material feeding the black hole as it grows.
Why is it important? This quasar study allows astronomers to learn about the universe at its earliest stages, given that the light we can observe from Earth has travelled millions of years to reach us.
Due to their intensity, quasars provide valuable information about galaxies, the distribution of matter, and the development of the first cosmic structures. Detecting water in a quasar so far away is especially important because it’s a component essential for life.
Images | NASA/ESA
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