1. Standard membervivify
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    21 Mar '17 03:351 edit
    https://www.fastcompany.com/1769468/scientists-discover-oldest-largest-body-water-existence-space

    Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence.

    Around a black hole 12 billion light years away, there’s an almost unimaginable vapor cloud of water–enough to supply an entire planet’s worth of water for every person on earth, 20,000 times over.

    The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.

    The official NASA news release describes the amount of water as “140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans”. That one cloud of newly discovered space water vapor could supply 140 trillion planets that are just as wet as Earth is.

    Mind you, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 400 billion stars, so if every one of those stars has 10 planets, each as wet as Earth, that’s only 4 trillion planets worth of water.

    The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water.

    Equally stunning is the age of the water factory. The two teams of astrophysicists that found the quasar were looking out in space a distance of 12 billion light years. That means they were also looking back in time 12 billion years, to when the universe itself was just 1.6 billion years old. They were watching water being formed at the very start of the known universe, which is to say, water was one of the first substances formed, created in galactic volumes from the earliest time. Given water’s creative power to shape geology, climate and biology, that’s dramatic.

    “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” says Matt Bradford, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of one of the teams that made the discovery. (The journal article reporting the discovery is titled, without drama, “The Water Vapor Spectrum of APM 08279+5255: X-Ray Heating and Infrared Pumping over Hundreds of Parsecs.” )

    It is not as if you’d have to wear foul-weather gear if you could visit this place in space, however. The distances are as mind-bogglingly large as the amount of water being created, so the water vapor is the finest mist–300 trillion times less dense than the air in a typical room.

    The NASA announcement is also a reminder how quickly our understanding of the universe is evolving and how much capacity for surprise nature still has for us. There’s water on Mars, there’s water jetting hundreds of miles into space from Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, there are icebergs of water hidden in the polar craters of our own Moon. And now it turns out that a single quasar has the ability to manufacture galaxies full of water.

    But it was only 40 years ago, in 1969, that scientists first confirmed that water existed anywhere besides Earth.
  2. Cape Town
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    21 Mar '17 06:03
    Originally posted by vivify
    Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence.
    What they mean is 'oldest known' and 'largest known'.

    Mind you, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 400 billion stars, so if every one of those stars has 10 planets, each as wet as Earth, that’s only 4 trillion planets worth of water.
    Our solar system has several moons with as much water as earth. As for the giant planets, they probably far exceed earths water, although I don't know the exact statistics. My guess is 10 earths worth is a serious under estimate.
  3. Subscribersonhouse
    Fast and Curious
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    21 Mar '17 11:06
    Originally posted by twhitehead
    What they mean is 'oldest known' and 'largest known'.

    [b]Mind you, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 400 billion stars, so if every one of those stars has 10 planets, each as wet as Earth, that’s only 4 trillion planets worth of water.

    Our solar system has several moons with as much water as earth. As for the giant planets, they probably f ...[text shortened]... ough I don't know the exact statistics. My guess is 10 earths worth is a serious under estimate.[/b]
    The bugaboo of course is getting at it to mine it and bring it back to Earth or Mars or the moon.
  4. Cape Town
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    21 Mar '17 13:35
    Originally posted by sonhouse
    The bugaboo of course is getting at it to mine it and bring it back to Earth or Mars or the moon.
    What? Are you thirsty or something? The Pacific too small for you?
    I thought you were recently complaining about sea level rise. Surely you would want to eject water from earth, not import it?
  5. Subscribersonhouse
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    slatington, pa, usa
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    21 Mar '17 18:19
    Originally posted by twhitehead
    What? Are you thirsty or something? The Pacific too small for you?
    I thought you were recently complaining about sea level rise. Surely you would want to eject water from earth, not import it?
    I was thinking more in terms of fresh water, not that salty crap in the oceans🙂
  6. Cape Town
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    21 Mar '17 19:02
    Originally posted by sonhouse
    I was thinking more in terms of fresh water, not that salty crap in the oceans🙂
    Most water on other bodies will be salty.
    Besides, desalination really isn't all that difficult.
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