Oceans cover around 70% of Earth’s surface, and we have only explored 5-20% of them! And now,
astronomers have found more water! A huge stash floating out there in space,
by a quasar that’s more than 12 billion light-years away! And we aren’t talking
about just a little puddle – it’s a mind-blowing amount of water,
about 140 trillion times more than all the water in Earth’s oceans combined! It’s
hanging around a supermassive black hole that’s a staggering 20 billion times bigger than our Sun!
This black hole is surrounded by a super-bright quasar [APM 08279+5255]. It
gives off as much energy as you’d get if you gathered a thousand trillion suns! I
can't count that high. By the way, since light takes time to reach us,
we’re seeing this quasar as it was when the universe was still young.
Astronomers are sure that the newly discovered water reservoir is the farthest and biggest we
have ever found in space. Matt Bradford from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains that
the environment of this quasar is so unique that it’s capable of creating an incredible amount of
water. Bradford’s team, along with another group of astronomers, has been studying the quasar and
the supermassive black hole at its center for quite some time. They’ve noticed that as the black
hole pulls in surrounding matter, it heats up the nearby gas and dust. This process has created
a region packed with molecules that have never been observed at such a great distance before.
Quasars were first spotted over 50 years ago when telescopes picked up super bright objects way out
in space. They’re not regular stars – they shine from the centers of distant galaxies and are so
powerful they outshine all the stars in their galaxy combined. At the heart of every quasar
is a gigantic black hole, which is millions or even billions of times heavier than the
Sun. When gas and dust swirl toward the black hole, they heat up and release an insane amount
of energy. It makes quasars some of the brightest and most powerful things we’ve ever seen in space.
Looking at quasars is like looking back in time. The light we see from them today
has been traveling for billions of years. It gives scientists a peek at what the universe
looked like way back in the past. Quasars can help us understand how galaxies formed,
how matter spread out, and how the first cosmic structures came together. Some quasars
shoot out massive jets of super-fast particles. Stretching across space,
they can sometimes change entire regions of the universe.
But let’s get back to that space water – or rather water vapor. When astronomers discovered it,
it was floating around the quasar, spread across a huge area hundreds of light-years wide. For
comparison, just one light-year is about six trillion miles! Even though the gas there is
incredibly thin – unlike what we’re used to on Earth – it’s much warmer and denser than
the gas found in most other galaxies, including even our own Milky Way. The temperature of this
gas is around minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s about three hundred trillion times less
dense than Earth’s atmosphere! It does sound extreme. Even in space terms, it’s unusual.
Now, water vapor isn’t just another molecule. The very fact that it exists near the quasar
hints that the area is regularly blasted with radiation. That’s what keeps the gas
warmer than usual. To add to the mystery, astronomers also found carbon monoxide and
other molecules. In other words, there’s plenty of raw material floating around. In the future,
this gas could help the supermassive black hole grow even bigger – up to six times its current
size! But that’s just one of many potential scenarios. Some of the gas might get pulled
into the black hole, some could form new stars, and some might even get flung out into space.
Finding water vapor in such a distant quasar means that the basic building blocks of the
universe have been around for billions of years. Water is crucial for life as we know it,
so its presence so long-ago hints that the ingredients for life existed much earlier
than we might have thought. But water isn’t just important for life. It also
plays a key role in how stars and galaxies form. When giant clouds of gas cool down,
water helps them collapse, making it easier for new stars to be born.
But how did researchers even spot this massive cloud of water? In 2008, Bradford’s team started
looking for water in space with the help of a special instrument called Z-Spec. It
was attached to a 33-foot telescope in Hawaii. To double-check their findings,
they used another powerful tool – CARMA. That’s a group of radio dishes in the mountains of Southern
California. At the same time, a different team was searching for water using a telescope in
the French Alps. In 2010, the second team found a small hint of water in the distant quasar. It
was just one teeny-tiny signal. After that, Bradford’s group detected more signals. It
was all the proof we needed to conclude that an enormous amount of water was actually out there.
Now, our floating cloud of water vapor isn’t the only place where we’ve found water beyond
Earth. Scientists have recently made a huge discovery – turns out, there are massive
reserves of liquid water hidden deep underground on Mars! So, in theory, future astronauts could
use this water to support missions or even make Mars a long-term home. But of course,
there’s a catch – this water isn’t sitting in nice, accessible lakes or oceans. It’s
buried so deep inside Mars that we have no way of reaching it with current technology. Scientists
have figured this out by analyzing seismic data from the Mars InSight lander. It picked up some
strange seismic activity – and the best way to explain it is by these hidden water reservoirs.
Mars does still have some water today, mostly as ice on or just beneath the surface.
But that’s nothing compared to the massive amounts of water the planet had billions of
years ago. The big mystery is: where did all that water go? Scientists think it
could have either escaped into space or moved into the planet’s interior,
where it might now be trapped as liquid reservoirs or ice deposits. The problem? We have no way
of measuring how much water Mars lost, so for now, that question remains unanswered.
Earth’s Moon has water, too – but not in the way you might think. Instead of lakes or rivers,
the Moon’s water is mostly frozen ice, spread out unevenly across the surface. The cold,
shadowed poles are especially full of it since they never get sunlight. A lot of this ice is
also mixed in with lunar soil and buried deep underground, making it super tricky to get to.
Then there’s Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. It’s tiny – just 314 miles across. That’s small
enough to fit inside Arizona! Hmm, I think we should try it. Anyway, when NASA’s Cassini
space probe arrived at Saturn, scientists expected Enceladus to be a barren, frozen
world. But instead, they saw huge plumes of icy particles and water vapor erupting from geysers
near the south pole. That meant there had to be a massive ocean hiding beneath its icy shell,
sandwiched between the moon’s rocky core and the frozen surface. The fact that this ocean is active
and constantly sending material into space makes Enceladus a top candidate for future exploration.
We also have Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons and one of the most promising places to search for
alien life. Europa has a gigantic saltwater ocean that could be 40 to 100 miles deep. This means
it might hold more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined! But there’s a big obstacle:
this ocean is hidden under a thick ice shell, which scientists think is 10 to 20 miles deep.
Europa’s ocean stays liquid because of tidal forces from Jupiter’s gravity. The planet’s
massive pull stretches and squeezes the moon, creating friction, which heats up the interior,
stopping the ocean from freezing solid. And the most exciting part is that scientists think water
plumes might be erupting from cracks in Europa’s ice, shooting ocean water into space. If that’s
true, we could potentially sample the ocean without having to drill through miles of ice!
But there are still a lot of unknowns. How big are Europa’s water reservoirs?
How quickly do they refreeze? And how does the intense temperature and pressure affect
the ice? Scientists are eager to figure this out because Europa’s ocean is one of the best
bets we have for finding extraterrestrial microbes somewhere in our Solar System.