Worlds watershortage solved

[dieseltaylor]

Bigtime. You know when they talk of the Magellanic clouds ... I am beginning to believe them.

Two international teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The researchers found the huge mass of water feeding a black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away. The mass of water vapor is at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world's oceans combined and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.

Quasars are among the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects known in the universe. They are powered by an enormous black hole that steadily consumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust, spewing out huge amounts of energy as it eats. The particular quasar under investigation, which bears the catchy name of APM 08279+5255, harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.

Although astronomers had expected water vapor to be present even in the early, distant universe, they had not detected it this far away before. They point out that there is water vapor in the Milky Way, but because most of the Milky Way's water is frozen in ice, the total amount of water vapor is 4,000 times less than in the quasar.

The astronomers say that water vapor is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of a quasar. In this case, the water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years in size. 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. Although the gas is at a chilly minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) and is 300 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere, it's still five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what's typical in galaxies like the Milky Way.

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. However, it's unclear whether this will happen or not as some of the gas may end up condensing into stars or might be ejected from the quasar.

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Source: NASA

[Magpie_Oz]

um..... 12 billions light years is an awful lot of pipe.

Did you not believe in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds?

[Michael Emrys]

Did you not believe in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds?

So far they don't seem to have produced very much rain though.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

OK I lied about the clouds. : )

It is an absolutely mind-boggling mass of water vapour. And if you think water is important to life then the idea that this exists out there raises the chances of life-forms - and even intelligent life-forms much higher. But then I am behind the curve on info on water in space judging by the Wikipedia entry.

The collective mass of water found on, under, and over the surface of a planet is called the hydrosphere. Earth's approximate water volume (the total water supply of the world) is 1,360,000,000 km3 (326,000,000 mi3).

So just multiply that out by 140 trillion and make it a cloud. Woweee.

[Magpie_Oz]

It is an absolutely mind-boggling mass of water vapour.

It certainly is that, can't even imagine how big it was. Of course it is probably all gone now because what the astronomers are looking at is something that happened 12 billion years ago and quasars are hungry buggers.

[dieseltaylor]

Good point. I tend to forget light-years are history.

The speed of dark is known to be greater than that of light. It must be, otherwise the dark wouldn’t be able to get out of the light’s way.

from

LIGHT ON THE DISCWORLD

There are (at least) four forms of light on Discworld:

• common light — to see things by. Its speed was measured to be equal to that of sound by the Ephebian philosopher Febrius in his "Give me a shout when you see it, OK?" experiment involving two hills, a lantern, and an assistant with a very loud voice. Splits into eight colours (ROYGBIV+ octarine) in a strong magical field.

• meta-light — to see dark by. Widely used in the moving picture industry.

• dark light — absorbed by Uberwaldian Deep Cave Land Eels: light within darkness. Heaver than normal light so mainly found under the sea or in deep caves in Uberwald.

• light fantastic — not strictly light at all but the opposite of light: the light that lies on the far side of darkness.

Also related is

• dark — not the absence of light, as it is in Roundworld, but a thing in its own right. Relates to light as knurd relates to drunk (in which case Roundworld ‘dark’ is ‘sober’). Thanks to The Science of Discworld Chapter 22 we know that dark is a privative.

The speed of dark is known to be greater than that of light. It must be, otherwise the dark wouldn’t be able to get out of the light’s way.

This led to an epic discovery by the famous* Troll mathematical physicist Big Al Onestone, who originally worked as a clerk in a patient office†.

* Well, he was famous in Slakki

† A doctor’s waiting room, so named because you wait in it, and have to be patient.

http://freespace.virgin.net/ianstewart.joat/MATHDW/light.html