Scientists at Caltech lead two teams of astronomers in a groundbreaking discovery – the largest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe, and it’s 30 billion trillion miles away.
The massive reservoir was found in a quasar, one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos. The amount of water vapor detected is at least 140 trillion times more than all the water in the world’s oceans combined.
Due to the distance, the light from the quasar has taken 12 billion years to reach Earth, with the observations revealing a period in the universe’s history when it was just 1.6 billion years old.
Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted that the unique environment around this quasar is producing a huge mass of water, demonstrating the pervasive nature of water throughout the universe, even in its earliest times.
Quasars are powered by massive black holes that consume surrounding gas and dust, spewing out huge amounts of energy as they do. The discovery of water vapor around this particular quasar was not surprising, as astronomers expect water vapor to be present even in the early universe. However, its presence revealed the nature of the quasar.
The discovery also highlights the benefits of observing in the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. As a result, the study authors are now designing CCAT, a 25-meter telescope that will be built in the Atacama Desert in Chile, which will allow astronomers to discover some of the earliest galaxies in the universe.
This groundbreaking discovery further emphasizes the importance of ongoing research in space exploration and our understanding of the cosmos.