Far. Very far away. Some 12 billion light years away, in a remote corner of the universe, lies an unimaginable water reservoir.
140 trillion oceans. 140,000 billion times (on the Anglo-Saxon scale) the volume of all the Earth’s oceans combined. The largest and most distant reservoir of water ever identified in the universe.
This colossal reservoir of water is in orbit around a quasar whose light reaches us shortly after the Big Bang. “This is a new indication that water is spread throughout the universeeven in its early stages“said one of its discoverers, scientist Matt Bradford of NASA’s JPL laboratory.
A supermassive black hole
The quasar, called APM 08279+5255, envelops a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the Sun which produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.
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This central black hole attracts surrounding matter, heating gas and dust to create a region full of molecules never before detected at such an extreme distance. Water vapor is one of these molecules, and its presence indicates that the quasar is emitting radiation, because it keeps the surrounding gas relatively hot.
What is a quasar?
These objects were named in the late 1950s, when telescopes of the time revealed mysterious sources of intense brightness in distant regions of space. They shine brightly from the centers of distant galaxies, eclipsing all the stars in their galaxy.
At the heart of these galaxies is a supermassive black hole whose mass is millions or even billions of times greater than that of our sun. As they spiral toward the black hole, the gas and dust heat up and release energy. This energy is radiated at all wavelengths, making quasars one of the brightest and most energetic phenomena in the cosmos.
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What makes this one special. Astronomers discovered that water vapor extended over a region of several hundred light years around the quasar. Knowing that a light year is equal to 9 trillion kilometers, there is no other reservoir of water as massive or as distant.
This exceptional reservoir is made possible by the unusual conditions surrounding it: the gas is five times hotter and hundreds of times denser than in typical galaxies. Astronomers also detected other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggesting that the black hole is being supplied with an abundance of matter as it grows.
Why is it important?
Studying quasars allows astronomers to learn more about the beginnings of the universe, because the light we can observe from Earth traveled billions of years before reaching us.
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Due to their intensity, quasars provide invaluable information about galaxy formationthe distribution of matter and the development of the first cosmic structures. Detecting water in such a distant quasar is particularly important because it is an essential element for life.
Article written in collaboration with our colleagues from Xataka.
