Astronomers Discover Enormous Water Cloud in Deep Space

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1:01years away. And we are talking about just a little puddle. It's a mind-blowing amount of water, about 140 trillion times more than all the water in Earth's oceans combined. It's hanging around a supermassive black hole that's a staggering 20 billion times bigger than our sun. This black hole is surrounded by a super bright quasar. It gives off as much energy as you get if you gathered 1,000 trillion suns. I can't count that high. Oh, by the way, since light takes time to reach us, we're seeing this quasar as it was when the universe was still very young. Astronomers are sure that the newly discovered water reservoir is the farthest and biggest we have ever found in space. Bradford from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains that the environment of this quasar is so unique that it's capable of creating an incredible amount of water. Bradford's team, along with another group of astronomers, has been studying the quasar and the supermassive black hole at its center for quite some time.

2:05They've noticed that as the black hole pulls in surrounding matter, it heats up the nearby gas and dust. This process has created a region packed with molecules that have never been observed at such a great distance before. Now quasars were first spotted around 50 years ago when telescopes picked up super bright objects way out in space. They're not regular stars. They shine from the centers of distant galaxies and are so powerful, they outshine all the stars in their galaxy combined. But the heart of every quasar is a gigantic black hole, which is millions or even billions of times heavier than the sun. When gas and dust swirl toward the black hole, they heat up and release an insane amount of energy. It makes quasars some of the brightest and most powerful things we've ever seen in space. Looking at quasars is like... The episode is brought to you by Peloton, breakthrough the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ.

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4:10first cosmic structures came together. Some quasars shoot up massive jets of super-fast particles. Stretching across space, they can sometimes change entire regions of the universe. But let's get back to that space water, or rather water vapor. When astronomers discovered it, it was floating around the quasar, spread across a huge area hundreds of light years wide. For comparison, just one light year is about 6 trillion miles. Even though the gas there is incredibly thin, unlike what we're used to on Earth, it's much warmer and denser than the gas found in most other galaxies, including our own Milky Way. The temperature of this gas is around –63 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's about 300 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere. It does sound extreme, even in space terms, it's unusual. Now, water vapor isn't just another molecule. The very fact that it exists near the quasar hints that the area is regularly blasted with

5:14radiation, that's what keeps the gas warmer than usual. To add to the mystery, astronomers also found carbon monoxide and other molecules. In other words, there's plenty of raw material floating around. In the future, this gas could help the supermassive black hole grow even bigger, up to six times its current size. But that's just one of many potential scenarios. Some of the gas might get pulled into the black hole. Some could form new stars, and some might even get flung out into space. Now, finding water vapor in such a distant quasar means that the basic building blocks of the universe have been around for billions of years. Water is crucial for life as we know it, so its presence so long ago hints that the ingredients for life existed much earlier than we might have thought. But water isn't just important for life. It also plays a key role in how stars and galaxies form. When giant clouds of gas cool down, water helps them collapse, making it easier for new

6:18stars to be born. And how did researchers even spot this massive cloud of water? In 2008, Bradford's team started looking for water in space with a help of a special instrument called Z-Spaer. It was attached to a 33-foot telescope in Hawaii. To double check their findings, they used another powerful tool, Karma, that's a group of radio dishes in the mountains of Southern California. At the same time, a different team was searching for water using a telescope in the French Alps. In 2010, the second team found a small hint of water in the distant quasar. It was just one teeny tiny signal. After that, Bradford's group detected more signals. It was all the proof we needed to conclude that an enormous amount of water was actually out there. Now, our floating cloud of water vapor isn't the only place where we found water beyond Earth. Scientists have recently made a huge discovery. This episode is brought to you by Redfin.

7:20You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking. Maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. It turns out there are massive reserves of liquid water hidden deep underground on Mars. So, in theory, future astronauts could use this water to support missions or even make Mars a long-term home. But of course, there's a catch. This water isn't sitting in nice, accessible lakes or oceans. It's buried so deep inside Mars that we have no way of reaching it with current technology. Mars has figured this out by analyzing seismic data from the Mars' incite lander. It picked up some strange seismic activity. And the best way to explain it is by these hidden water reservoirs.

8:24Mars still does have some water today, mostly as ice on or just beneath the surface. But that's nothing compared to the massive amounts of water the planet had billions of years ago. The big mystery is, where did all that water go? And to think it could have either escaped into space or moved into the planet's interior, where it might now be trapped as liquid reservoirs or ice deposits. The problem? We have no way of measuring how much water Mars lost. So for now, that question remains unanswered. Earth Moon has water, too, but not in the way you might think. Instead of lakes or rivers, the moon's water is mostly frozen ice, spread out unevenly across the surface. The cold, shadowed poles are especially full of it, since they never get sunlight. A lot of this ice is also mixed in with lunar soil and buried deep underground, making it super tricky to get to. Then, there's insettiless, one of Saturn's moons.

9:25It's tiny, just 314 miles across. It's small enough to fit inside Arizona. Hmm, I think we should try that. Anyway, when NASA's Cassini Space Probe arrived at Saturn, scientists expected insettiless to be a barren, frozen world, but instead, they saw huge plumes of icy particles and water vapor erupting from geysers near the South Pole. That meant there had to be a massive ocean hiding beneath its icy shell, sandwiched between the Moon's rocky core and the frozen surface. The fact that this ocean is active and constantly sending material into space makes insettiless a top candidate for future exploration. We also have Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and one of the most promising places to search for alien life. Europa has a gigantic saltwater ocean that could be 40-100 miles deep. This means it might hold more water than all of Earth's oceans combine, but there's a

10:25big obstacle. This ocean is hidden under a thick ice shell, which scientists think is 10-20 miles deep. Europa's ocean stays liquid because of tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity. The planet's massive pool stretches and squeezes the Moon, creating friction, which heats up the interior, stopping the ocean from freezing solid. And the most exciting part is that scientists think water plumes might be erupting from cracks in Europa's eyes, shooting ocean water into space. Now if that's true, we could potentially sample the ocean without having to drill through miles of ice. But there are still a lot of unknowns. How big are Europa's water reservoirs? How quickly do they re-freeze? And how does the intense temperature and pressure affect the ice? Scientists are eager to figure this out because Europa's ocean is one of the best bets we have for finding extraterrestrial microbes somewhere in our solar system.

11:27Guess what? Such ocean might be hidden deep beneath us, about 250-400 miles down, and it's bigger than any ocean on Earth's surface. Scientists were listening to earthquakes deep within our planet and noticed how these shakes slowed down when passing through certain parts of the mantle. This suggested that water was there. Models and experiments led them to uncover the underground ocean. But this ocean isn't like the typical water you imagine. It's a lot crazier. The mantle is a thick layer between the Earth's crust and core. It consists of the upper mantle, the lower mantle, and a mysterious layer between them called the transition zone. In the upper layer, we can often find a fascinating material called olivine, which got its name from a pretty greenish color. Olivine doesn't care about high temperatures and thrives in lava comfortably. It not only thrives, but it even makes up 50% of the entire upper mantle.

12:30We can find this stuff on Earth thanks to volcanoes. When volcanoes spew their magma out, all the minerals in it make their way to the surface. As magma cools and solidifies, it forms igneous- When you ship UPS air at the UPS store, your items arrive on time or your money back, guaranteed at no extra cost exclusively at the UPS store U.S. retail locations. Send Easter Jewel on time at the UPS store. Visit the UPS store dot com slash air guarantee for full details, terms and conditions apply.