Produced by: Manoj Kumar
Astronomers found a water reservoir 140 trillion times Earth’s oceans, swirling around a quasar 12 billion light-years away — the largest, most distant water ever seen.
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The quasar APM 08279+5255 hides a supermassive black hole and blasts out energy like a thousand trillion Suns, creating perfect conditions for vast water vapor clouds.
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This discovery rewrites cosmic history, proving that water existed just 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than scientists believed possible.
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Unlike the Milky Way’s tiny water vapor traces, this quasar holds 4,000 times more water, challenging what we know about galactic evolution.
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Despite being 12 billion light-years away, the water is unusually warm at -63°F, heated by intense radiation from the black hole’s ferocious activity.
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Teams used powerful telescopes across the globe — from Hawaii to California to the French Alps — to detect and confirm this staggering cosmic reservoir.
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Water is key to life, and this ancient find hints that life’s ingredients were widespread much earlier in the universe, fueling new hope in the search for alien worlds.
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The quasar’s water-rich gas could birth new stars or feed the black hole, but it may also be blasted into space, shaping the galaxy’s fate, says NASA’s Matt Bradford.
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With water and carbon monoxide swirling around it, this black hole could grow six times larger, consuming its cosmic buffet — or trigger explosive star formation.
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