Two teams of astronomers discovered the giant and massive reservoir of water in space, equivalent to 140 trillion times the water in the world's ocean, surrounding a huge black hole, called "QUASAR", which is more than 12 billion light years away.
WHAT are QUASAR?
DISCOVERY...
"The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water," said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Both groups of astronomers studied a particular quasar called APM 08279+5255, having a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.
Water vapour is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of the quasar. In this particular quasar, the water vapour is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years in size (a light-year is about six trillion miles). Its presence indicates that the quasar is bathing the gas in X-rays and infrared radiation, and that the gas is unusually warm and dense by astronomical standards.
Measurements of the water vapor and of other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggest there is enough gas to feed the black hole until it grows to about six times its size.
Discovery of the surprising water reservoir is made by the use of some astronomical instruments.
The first group led by Bradford's made their observations using an instrument "Z-SPEC" basically a 10 meter long telescope🔭. Following observations were made with the "Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA)", an array of radio dishes.
Another group led by Dariusz Lis, used the "Plateau de Bure Interferometer" (a six antenna inferometer), in the French Alps to find water.
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