Astronomers have identified the most massive and distant water reservoir ever detected in the universe, located around quasar APM 08279+5255, approximately 12 billion light-years from Earth. This enormous water vapor cloud holds an estimated 140 trillion times the amount of water found in all of Earth's oceans combined.
Quasars are highly luminous celestial objects powered by supermassive black holes consuming surrounding matter. In this case, the quasar's black hole is about 20 billion times more massive than the Sun and generates energy equivalent to a thousand trillion Suns.
The discovery of such a vast water source just 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang suggests that water has been abundant throughout much of cosmic history. This finding offers crucial insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies and the potential existence of life-supporting conditions in the early universe.
This breakthrough challenges previous assumptions about the distribution of water in space and opens new doors for research into cosmic evolution and the building blocks of life.
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