The realms of the cosmos continually bewilder and amaze us, presenting phenomena of such massive scale that they dwarf our own terrestrial existence. Such is the case with the discovery back in 2011, where astronomers, including a team led by Matt Bradford of JPL, unveiled what is now considered the largest and most distant water reservoir ever detected in the universe. This colossal reservoir of water vapor, equivalent to 140 trillion times the water on Earth, orbits a gargantuan black hole more than 12 billion light-years away, within a quasar known as APM 08279+5255.
Quasars, those extraordinarily bright beacons in the distant universe, are powered by black holes billions of times more massive than our Sun. They shine as the central black hole feasts on surrounding material, releasing immense energy in a spectacle that is both destructive and creative. This particular quasar is a testament to the prodigious forces at play in the early universe, emitting energy equivalent to a thousand trillion suns. The quasar’s luminosity is so great that it lights up the vast reservoir around it, allowing scientists to catch a glimpse of the staggering volume of water in its grasp.
The detection of such a massive cloud of water vapor at this early epoch, at the youthful age of the universe of just 1.6 billion years old, opens new doors to understanding the early universe’s chemistry and how elements like oxygen could rapidly enrich galaxies. “The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.” Bradford leads one of the teams that made the discovery. His team’s research is partially funded by NASA and appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
This discovery was possible thanks to observations made with a spectrograph attached to the ten-meter Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
Relevant articles:
– Astronomers Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water, July 22, 2011