NASA discovers the largest reserve of water in the Universe

The POT has discovered the largest mass of water in the universe. The discovery is equivalent to about 140 billion times the water present in Earth’s oceans. The discovery was presented by two teams of astronomers just over ten years ago. The liquid surrounds a large active quasar black hole, more than 12 billion light years away.

Quasars are active nuclei of galaxies, where a supermassive black hole extra material from the surrounding disk. In some of them, the black hole generates a jet of water that shoots out at practically the speed of light.

However, as light has had to travel 12 billion years until we reach our telescopeswe are observing water that was present 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang. In this way, the discovery represents the largest and oldest reserve of water known to date.

Quasars feed on the black hole, which constantly consumes a disk of gas and dust that surrounds it. As it eats it, the quasar spits out large amounts of energy. In addition, they are very bright and can be detected at great distances.