A distant quasar hosts an enormous cloud of water vapor containing far more water than all oceans on Earth. Deep inside our own planet, researchers have identified a vast reservoir of water stored within mantle minerals far below the surface. Both discoveries highlight how water can exist in places that are difficult to observe directly. Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
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00:00You know, oceans cover around 70% of Earth's surface, and we have only explored 5-20% of them.
00:08And 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.
02:11Looking 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.
02:58Even 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, up 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, and 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 have 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, making it easier for new stars to be born.
04:39But how did researchers even spot this massive cloud of water?
04:43In 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, CARMA.
05:00That's a group of radio dishes in the mountains of Southern California.
05:04At 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.
05:49But, 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.
06:02Scientists 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.
06:14Mars 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.
06:26The 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? We have no way of measuring how much water Mars lost.
06:44So, for now, that question remains unanswered.
06:48Earth's moon has water too, but not in the way you might think.
06:52Instead 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,
07:08making it super tricky to get to.
07:11Then, there's Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.
07:15It's tiny, just 314 miles across.
07:19It'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.
07:31But 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,
08:00and 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,
08:20which scientists think is 10 to 20 miles deep.
08:24Europa's ocean stays liquid because of tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity.
08:28The planet's massive pull stretches and squeezes the moon,
08:32creating friction, which heats up the interior,
08:35stopping the ocean from freezing solid.
08:37And the most exciting part is that scientists think water plumes
08:41might be erupting from cracks in Europa's ice,
08:45shooting ocean water into space.
08:47Now, if that's true, we could potentially sample the ocean
08:50without having to drill through miles of ice.
08:54But 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?
09:05Scientists 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.
09:17Guess what?
09:18A huge ocean might be hidden deep beneath us,
09:21about 250 to 400 miles down.
09:24And it's bigger than any ocean on Earth's surface.
09:28Scientists were listening to earthquakes deep within our planet
09:31and noticed how these shakes slowed down when passing through certain parts of the mantle.
09:37This suggested that water was there.
09:39Models and experiments led them to uncover the underground ocean.
09:43But this ocean isn't like the typical water you imagine.
09:47It's a lot crazier.
09:49The mantle is a thick layer between the Earth's crust and core.
09:53It consists of the upper mantle, the lower mantle,
09:57and a mysterious layer between them called the transition zone.
10:01In the upper layer, we can often find a fascinating material called olivine,
10:07which got its name from a pretty greenish color.
10:10Olivine doesn't care about high temperatures and thrives in lava comfortably.
10:15It not only thrives, but it even makes up 50% of the entire upper mantle.
10:20We can find this stuff on Earth thanks to volcanoes.
10:24When volcanoes spew their magma out,
10:27all the minerals in it make their way to the surface.
10:29As magma cools and solidifies, it forms igneous...
10:33That's it for today.
10:34So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
10:37then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
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