This Ocean in Space Is 140 Trillion Times Bigger Than Ours

Bright Side

Scientists have found a giant ocean in space, and it's absolutely insane. 🌌 It's not just any ocean — it's 140 trillion times bigger than all the water on Earth combined! This massive cloud of water vapor is chilling near a black hole, billions of light-years away. Yup, there’s literally a cosmic bathtub out there in deep space. 🛁 It’s the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected, and it's just floating around the universe like it's no big deal. Space keeps getting weirder, and honestly… we’re here for it. 🚀  Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/: Quasar Mark Johnston: by Azhikerdude, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Quasar_Mark_Johnston.jpg NOEMA observatory: by IRAM-gre, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_NOEMA_observatory_operated_by_IRAM.jpg CARMA: by Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CARMA_2012_17.jpg quasars get dressed: by ESA/Hubble, ESO/NASA/ESA/D. Elbaz/L. Calçada, https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso0946a/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:How_do_quasars_get_dressed_(eso0946a).webm quasar 3C 279: by ESO/M. Kornmesser, https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1229c/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artist’s_impression_of_the_quasar_3C_279_(alternative_version).ogv Galaxy Formation: by APOD Videos, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galaxy_Formation_in_a_Magnetic_Universe.webm Monster Black Hole: by NASA Goddard, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NASA%27s_Fermi_Links_Cosmic_Neutrino_to_Monster_Black_Hole_vwRSk524dpo.webm Black Hole Accretion Disk: by Credit: Dana Berry/NASA, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Hole_Accretion_Disk.ogv Enceladus: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc./Jenny McElligott, ADNET Systems, Inc./Aaron E. Lepsch, Catholic University of America/Geronimo Villanueva, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Michael Lentz, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Walt Feimer, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20384, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enceladus_(SVS20384_-_OceanVents_ProRes).webm Enceladus: by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc./Jenny McElligott, ADNET Systems, Inc./Aaron E. Lepsch, Catholic University of America/Geronimo Villanueva, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Michael Lentz, KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Walt Feimer, https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/20384, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enceladus_(SVS20384_-_EnceladusGeyser_webm).webm Europa orbit.theora: by NASA/JPL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europa_orbit.theora.ogv Europa: by NASA, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:What_You_Need_to_Know_About_Europa.webm Animation is created by Bright Side.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

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00:00You know, oceans cover around 70% of Earth's surface, and we have only explored 5-20% of them.

00:07And now, astronomers have found more water, a huge stash, floating out there in space by a quasar that's more than 12 billion light-years away.

00:17And we aren't talking about just a little puddle.

00:20It's a mind-blowing amount of water, about 140 trillion times more than all the water in Earth's oceans combined.

00:28It's hanging around a supermassive black hole that's a staggering 20 billion times bigger than our sun.

00:35This black hole is surrounded by a super-bright quasar.

00:38It gives off as much energy as you get if you gathered a thousand trillion suns.

00:43I can't count that high.

00:45Oh, 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.

00:53Astronomers are sure that the newly discovered water reservoir is the farthest and biggest we have ever found in space.

01:01Mark 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.

01:12Bradford'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.

01:20They've noticed that as the black hole pulls in surrounding matter, it heats up the nearby gas and dust.

01:27This process has created a region packed with molecules that have never been observed at such a great distance before.

01:35Now, quasars were first spotted around 50 years ago, when telescopes picked up super-bright objects way out in space.

01:42They're not regular stars.

01:44They shine from the centers of distant galaxies and are so powerful, they outshine all the stars in their galaxy combined.

01:52At the heart of every quasar is a gigantic black hole, which is millions or even billions of times heavier than the sun.

01:59When gas and dust swirl toward the black hole, they heat up and release an insane amount of energy.

02:06It makes quasars some of the brightest and most powerful things we've ever seen in space.

02:10Looking at quasars is like looking back in time.

02:15The light we see from them today has been traveling for billions of years.

02:19It gives scientists a peek at what the universe looked like way back in the past.

02:24Quasars can help us understand how galaxies formed, how matter spread out, and how the first cosmic structures came together.

02:32Some quasars shoot out massive jets of super-fast particles.

02:36Stretching across space, they can sometimes change entire regions of the universe.

02:42But let's get back to that space water, or rather, water vapor.

02:47When astronomers discovered it, it was floating around the quasar, spread across a huge area hundreds of light-years wide.

02:54For comparison, just one light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

02:59Even though the gas there is incredibly thin, unlike what we're used to on Earth,

03:03it's much warmer and denser than the gas found in most other galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

03:09The temperature of this gas is around minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit,

03:14and it's about 300 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere.

03:19It does sound extreme.

03:20Even in space terms, it's unusual.

03:23Now, water vapor isn't just another molecule.

03:27The very fact that it exists near the quasar hints that the area is regularly blasted with radiation.

03:34That's what keeps the gas warmer than usual.

03:36To add to the mystery, astronomers also found carbon monoxide and other molecules.

03:43In other words, there's plenty of raw material floating around.

03:46In the future, this gas could help the supermassive black hole grow even bigger,

03:51up to six times its current size.

03:53But that's just one of many potential scenarios.

03:57Some of the gas might get pulled into the black hole, some could form new stars,

04:02and some might even get flung out into space.

04:05Now, finding water vapor in such a distant quasar means that the basic building blocks of the universe

04:12have been around for billions of years.

04:14Water is crucial for life as we know it.

04:17So its presence so long ago hints that the ingredients for life existed much earlier than we might have thought.

04:24But water isn't just important for life.

04:27It also plays a key role in how stars and galaxies form.

04:31When giant clouds of gas cool down, water helps them collapse,

04:36making it easier for new stars to be born.

04:38But how did researchers even spot this massive cloud of water?

04:44In 2008, Bradford's team started looking for water in space with the help of a special instrument called Z-Spec.

04:51It was attached to a 33-foot telescope in Hawaii.

04:55To double-check their findings, they used another powerful tool, CARMUP.

05:00That's a group of radio dishes in the mountains of Southern California.

05:03At the same time, a different team was searching for water using a telescope in the French Alps.

05:09In 2010, the second team found a small hint of water in the distant quasar.

05:15It was just one teeny tiny signal.

05:17After that, Bradford's group detected more signals.

05:21It was all the proof we needed to conclude that an enormous amount of water was actually out there.

05:27Now, our floating cloud of water vapor isn't the only place where we've found water beyond Earth.

05:33Scientists have recently made a huge discovery.

05:36It turns out there are massive reserves of liquid water hidden deep underground on Mars.

05:42So, in theory, future astronauts could use this water to support missions or even make Mars a long-term home.

05:50But, of course, there's a catch.

05:52This water isn't sitting in nice, accessible lakes or oceans.

05:55It's buried so deep inside Mars that we have no way of reaching it with current technology.

06:01Scientists have figured this out by analyzing seismic data from the Mars InSight lander.

06:07It picked up some strange seismic activity.

06:10And the best way to explain it is by these hidden water reservoirs.

06:15Mars still does have some water today, mostly as ice on or just beneath the surface.

06:20But that's nothing compared to the massive amounts of water the planet had billions of years ago.

06:25The big mystery is, where did all that water go?

06:30Scientists think it could have either escaped into space or moved into the planet's interior,

06:35where it might now be trapped as liquid reservoirs or ice deposits.

06:39The problem?

06:40We have no way of measuring how much water Mars lost.

06:44So, for now, that question remains unanswered.

06:48Earth-Moon has water too, but not in the way you might think.

06:51Instead of lakes or rivers, the moon's water is mostly frozen ice, spread out unevenly across the surface.

06:59The cold, shadowed poles are especially full of it, since they never get sunlight.

07:04A lot of this ice is also mixed in with lunar soil and buried deep underground, making it super tricky to get to.

07:11Then there's Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.

07:15It's tiny, just 314 miles across.

07:18It's small enough to fit inside Arizona.

07:21Hmm, I think we should try that.

07:23Anyway, when NASA's Cassini space probe arrived at Saturn,

07:28scientists expected Enceladus to be a barren, frozen world.

07:32But instead, they saw huge plumes of icy particles and water vapor erupting from geysers near the South Pole.

07:39That meant there had to be a massive ocean hiding beneath its icy shell,

07:44sandwiched between the moon's rocky core and the frozen surface.

07:48The fact that this ocean is active and constantly sending material into space

07:52makes Enceladus a top candidate for future exploration.

07:57We also have Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and one of the most promising places to search for alien life.

08:04Europa has a gigantic saltwater ocean that could be 40 to 100 miles deep.

08:10This means it might hold more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.

08:15But there's a big obstacle.

08:17This ocean is hidden under a thick ice shell, which scientists think is 10 to 20 miles deep.

08:23Europa's ocean stays liquid because of tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity.

08:28The planet's massive pull stretches and squeezes the moon, creating friction,

08:34which heats up the interior, stopping the ocean from freezing solid.

08:37And the most exciting part is that scientists think water plumes might be erupting from cracks

08:43in Europa's ice, shooting ocean water into space.

08:47Now, if that's true, we could potentially sample the ocean without having to drill through miles of ice.

08:53But there are still a lot of unknowns.

08:57How big are Europa's water reservoirs?

09:00How quickly do they refreeze?

09:02And how does the intense temperature and pressure affect the ice?

09:06Scientists are eager to figure this out because Europa's ocean is one of the best bets we have

09:11for finding extraterrestrial microbes somewhere in our solar system.

09:17That's it for today.

09:18So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

09:23Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

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