Ancient Cosmic Water Found Adrift in Space

Scientists at Caltech have discovered the largest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe, located in a quasar 30 billion trillion miles away. The water vapor mass is at least 140 trillion times more than all the water in Earth's oceans combined. This finding, observed when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old, highlights the pervasiveness of water throughout the universe. The discovery also emphasizes the benefits of observing in millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, leading to the design of a 25-meter telescope to be built in Chile's Atacama Desert.