ScienceDaily (July 22, 2011) — Water really is everywhere. A team of astronomers have found the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe — discovered in the central regions of a distant quasar. Quasars contain massive black holes that are steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. The energy from this particular quasar was released some 12 billion years ago, only 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang and long before most of the stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy began forming.

The research team includes Carnegie’s Eric Murphy, as well as scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, University of Colorado, University of Pennsylvania, and the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Japan. Their research will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The quasar’s newly discovered mass of water exists in gas, or vapor, form. It is estimated to be at least 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, equivalent to 34 billion times the mass of Earth or 140 trillion times the mass of water in all of Earth’s oceans put together.

Since astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early universe, the discovery of water is not itself a surprise. There is water vapor in the Milky Way, although the amount is 4,000 times less massive than in the quasar. There is other water in the Milky Way, but it is frozen and not vaporous.

to read more, go to:    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110722142058.htm