Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
some fun facts about
this huge water cloud
"Quasars are the most luminous, most powerful and most energetic objects in the universe. They are powered by enormous black holes that suck in surrounding gas and dust and spew out huge amounts of energy.” (space.com)
It's not just big... it's "100,000 times larger than the sun big...
It holds 140 trillion times more water than all of our oceans." (cracked.com)
The cloud of water is also unusually warm for being smack dab in the
middle of space, it "has a temperature of minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit."
To put that intereting factoid into context, "the cloud is five times
hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what's typical in galaxies like the
Milky Way." (space.com)
The water that is surrounding the quasar APM 08279+5255 is said to be the largest body of water in the universe,
"a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water--20,000 times over”
(fastcompany.com)
you know what the
craziest part about it is?
This water cloud that we discovered might not even exist anymore,
or might be totally different from how we're seeing it now- what we're
seeing is a reflection of light 12 billion light years away.
That means we're "looking back in time 12 billion years, to when the
universe itself was just 1.6 billion years old." (space.com)
We are seeing this "water cloud being formed at the very start of the
known universe." (space.com)
Sources:
Information:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722-image.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/1769468/scientists-discover-oldest-largest-body-water-existence-space
http://www.space.com/12400-universe-biggest-oldest-cloud-water.html
http://www.space.com/12113-brightest-object-early-universe-quasar-discovered.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_19479_the-6-most-mind-blowing-things-ever-discovered-in-space.html
Images:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722-image.html
http://www.clipartreview.com/_images_300/An_astronaut_spilling_water_in_zero_gravity_100804-126041-262009.jpg
http://www.stuffintheair.com/images/CartoonAstronomer.gif
http://tews-spacerace.org/attachments/Image/Cartoon_Space-Earth-Satellites.jpg
http://www.clipartheaven.com/clipart/time/alarm_clock_03.gif
http://cdn.vectorstock.com/i/composite/87,55/water-drop-cartoon-character-vector-938755.jpg
Tl;dr (too long; didn't read)
more "cool" facts about the cloud
Space is cool! There are giant clouds of water that come from far-away galaxies, inexplicable black holes that spew out water and create such clouds, and scientists and astronomers from such far-off places as the University of Maryland are discovering more and more about our Universe every day.
The cloud of water is really thinly spread out, and according to (fastcompany.com), "is the finest mist- 300 trillion times less dense than the air in a typical room."
So, as (cracked.com) joked, even if astronauts made it so far away from our home planet to the water, "it's not like [they] are going to be packing their swimming trunks or anything."
In case the earlier fact that this cloud is humongous didn't fully sink in, here are some more somewhat understandable analogies from (fastcompany.com):
This "cloud of water is [large] enough to supply 28 galaxies with water." To put that into context, we have in our galaxy specifically, 4 trillion planets. Therefore, this cloud could supply 4 trillion planets in each of the 28 galaxies with as much water as Earth currently has. Our planet's surface is covered with at least 71% water, so that would be quite a bit.
why does this matter?
Well, first of all, all information matters in some way, to someone.
Also, learning about new things is space is important, especially when considering how these facts affect our collective future. We may well run put of water at some point, but through this cloud of water, and the advanced technology researching space and time creates, we could theoretically supplement our limited supply pf water. We could also use it to help astronauts complete their journeys through space, and replenish their resources when out on very long, very far away missions when the technology becomes available.
Finaally, you should care or at least be proud because the co-author of this study was "Alberto Bolatto, of the University of Maryland." He aptly remarks that "this discovery pushes the detection of water one billion years closer to the Big Bang than any previous find." (space.com)
Maybe with all of these discoveries we might finally find the origin of the universe.