Astronomers discover a reservoir of water floating in space that is 140 trillion times larger than the total amount of water in Earth’s oceans

There is a water reserve the size of 140 trillion oceans hidden in a distant supermassive black hole, the largest reservoir of water in the universe and 4,000 times the amount of water found in the Milky Way.

This amount of water was discovered by two teams of astronomers are 12 billion light years away, where it appears as vapor dispersed over hundreds of light years.

The reservoir was discovered in the gas of a quasar, a bright, dense region at the center of a galaxy powered by a black hole. This discovery proves that water may have been present throughout the universe, even in its earliest times.

Although this is not surprising to experts, water has never been found this far before.Light from the quasar (specifically quasar APM 08279+5255 in the constellation Lynx) took 12 billion years to reach Earth, implying that this water body existed when the universe was only 1.6 billion years old.

One group used the Z-Spec instrument at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii, while the other used the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps. 

These sensors detect millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, allowing the detection of trace gases (or vast reservoirs of water vapor) in the early cosmos. 

The discovery of many spectral fingerprints of water in the quasar provided researchers with the data they needed to calculate the vast magnitude of the reservoir.