APM 08279+5255 is a quasar located in the constellation Lynx that contains 100 trillion times more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. Despite being 100,000 times more massive than the sun, this quasar is so distant that it took 12 billion years for its light to reach our planet.
Supermassive black holes are what power quasars, and as they are being consumed, these galactic objects eject large amounts of energy. In the case of APM 08279+5255, the quasar is believed to harbor a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun, generating as much energy as a thousand trillion suns. Its water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region that spans hundreds of light-years.
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The environment around this quasar is unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water. It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’ Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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