July 26, 2011 - The largest water reservoir to be found in space has been discovered by a group of astronomers.
The huge water vapor cloud is floating around a black hole and lies some 10 billion light years away. It holds about 140 trillion times the mass of water contained in Earth's oceans, reports The Christian Post.
“Since astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early universe, the discovery of water is not itself a surprise.” Said the Carnegie Institution, which is one of the groups that collaborated in the new finding.
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“Quasars contain massive black holes that steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out amounts of energy.” The Carnegie rep continued.
The water is in a distant "quasar," which is part of the black hole study that brought on the discovery. Named "APM 08279+5255", the quasar's black hole is 20 billion times greater than our sun.
These observations began to be performed by NASA in 2008 with a 33-foot instrument called a "Z-Spec" at Caltech's Submillimeter Observatory. This specialized telescope is located near the Mauna Kea summit in Hawaii.
“The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water." NASA scientist Matt Bradford said, "It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.”
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The discovering team is comprised of astronomers and scientists from all over the U.S. and the world, from institutions such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, University of Maryland and the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science on Japan.
The research on the discovery will appear in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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