by Demand:
The largest reservoir of water in space is 140 trillion times all the water in the Earth’s oceans.
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Found throughout space are so-called highly active and luminous entities quasar. With almost a million quasars identified by astronomers as of August 2023, one in particular was said to be home to 140 trillion times the amount of water in all of Earth’s oceans.
A post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on June 5, 2023, (archived here) saw one iteration of this claim, noting that the quasar in question was the “largest reservoir of water in space.” At the time of this publication, the post had received more than 11,000 views:
“Astronomers discover largest reservoir of water in space, containing 140 trillion times all the water in Earth’s oceans”. https://t.co/cRxYW4iQUD
— Physicsastronomy (@Physicsastronomy) June 6, 2023
This claim is true. The discovery of water at APM 08279+5255black hole 20 billion times larger than the sun, which was Announced at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 22, 2011 (archived here):
Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and longest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, which is 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans, surrounds a supermassive black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.
Described in 2011 in the peer-reviewed journal of the American Astronomical Society, The Astrophysical Journal lettersThe JPL said that APM 08279+5255 was producing the energy of “one thousand trillion suns” in an environment that allowed for the production of “an enormous mass of water.”
The presence of water vapor was not surprising, but the sheer volume impressed the researchers. APM 08279+5255 holds 4,000 times more water vapor than the Milky Way, showing how this celestial body works. The JPL continued:
Water vapor is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of the quasar. In this particular quasar, the water vapor is distributed throughout the black hole in a gaseous region that spans hundreds of light-years in size (a light-year is about six trillion miles). Their presence indicates that the quasar is bathing the gas in X-rays and infrared radiation and that the gas is unusually hot and dense by astronomical standards. Although the cold gas is minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) and is 300 trillion times denser than Earth’s atmosphere, it is still five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than typical in galaxies like the Milky Way.
We should note that the image shared in the social media post, however, is an image the concept of the artist. Considering APM 08279+5255 is about 12 billion light years from Earth, according to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, capturing such detailed images is challenging. Below is a real image of the quasar:
(CXC/M.Weiss )
Sources:
APM08279+5255. https://research.ast.cam.ac.uk/lensedquasars/indiv/APM08279+5255.html. Accessed 14 February 2024.
Chandra :: Photo Album :: APM 08279+5255 :: 27 Mar 03. https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/apm08279/. Accessed 14 February 2024.
Chandra :: Photo Album :: APM 08279+5255 :: APM 08279+5255 Sheet. https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/apm08279/apm08279_hand.html#:~:text=APM%2008279%2B5255%3A%20A%20quasar,billion%20light%20years%20from%20Earth. Accessed 14 February 2024.
“https://Twitter.Com/Physicsastronmy/Status/1665886272563314689.” X (formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/Physicsastronmy/status/1665886272563314689 . Accessed 14 February 2024.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov. “Astronomers Find Largest and Most Area Reservoir of Water.” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/astronomers-find-largest-most-distant-reservoir-of-water. Accessed 14 February 2024.
—. “A quasar engulfed in water vapor (Artist’s Concept).” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia16114-quasar-drenched-in-water-vapor-artists-concept. Accessed 14 February 2024.
eolas@eso.org. Quasar. https://esahubble.org/wordbank/quasar/. Accessed 14 February 2024.
MILLIQUAS – Catalog of Million Quasars, Version 8 (2 August 2023). https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/w3browse/all/milliquas.html. Accessed 14 February 2024.
Radware Captcha Bot Manager. https://hcvalidate.perfdrive.com/fb803c746e9148689b3984a31fccd902//?ssa=c03a5315-c8a3-4e0d-be06-3b5cd95296ad&ssb=6346372s%2Farticle%2F10.1088%2F2041-8205%2F74 1%2F2%2FL37&ssi=6ff37fd1-8427-43a2- 8176-21baad163d4e&ssk=support@shieldsquare.com&ssm=490311991981149641046279360c 3697b72fcd3fd01f94f3b5499a-91e3-4971-b19b26&sso=1b7aa399-8eb395ec6d9666 1c8512889db0191294d52d8cf32d747f 0790065061447&ssq=70179945027584171446050275617540510829459&ssr=My4yMzUuODcuMTQ3&sst=Mozilla/5.0%20(Macintosh); %20Intel%20Mac%20OS%20X%2010_15_7)%20AppleWebKit/ 537.36%20(KHTML,%20like%20Gecko)%20Chrome/120.0.0.0%20Safari/537.36&sw=sw=s&sw=sw=s Accessed 14 February 2024.
