Twelve billion light-years from Earth, astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery: an enormous reservoir of water surrounding a distant quasar, holding an estimated 140 trillion times the amount of water found in all of Earth’s oceans.
This detection marks the most massive and distant source of water ever found in the universe, offering a rare glimpse into the chemistry of the cosmos just 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang.
A blazing quasar at the center
At the heart of this discovery lies a quasar known as APM 08279+5255, a bright and energetic object powered by a supermassive black hole around 20 billion times the mass of the Sun.
The intense heat and radiation generated by the quasar create the conditions necessary for water vapor to exist on a colossal scale. Despite being located so far away, the water spans a region several hundred light-years across, enveloping the quasar in a vast cloud of vapor.
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A rare look at the early universe
What makes this discovery even more remarkable is its age.
The light from this water cloud began its journey more than 12 billion years ago, offering scientists a window into a time when the universe was still in its infancy.
It proves that water—a key ingredient for life—existed in significant quantities far earlier than previously thought.
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Why it matters
This finding reshapes our understanding of how water and other complex molecules formed in the early universe. It also hints at the existence of large reservoirs of water in distant galaxies, potentially fueling star formation and black hole growth.
By studying such remote and extreme environments, astronomers hope to unravel how galaxies evolved and whether the building blocks of life could be more common across the cosmos than we ever imagined.
