Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery of a massive water reservoir encircling the quasar APM 08279+5255, located over 12 billion light-years away.

This quasar is remarkable for emitting energy equivalent to a thousand trillion suns, making it the largest and farthest known water reservoir in the universe.

The reservoir is estimated to contain approximately 140 trillion times the amount of water found in Earth's oceans.

Associated with a supermassive black hole that is about 20 billion times the mass of the sun, this quasar presents a unique cosmic environment.

The presence of water vapor in the quasar's environment suggests that it is kept warm by radiation from the black hole, resulting in gas that is relatively warm and dense by cosmic standards.

In addition to water, the detection of other molecules like carbon monoxide indicates a rich array of materials that may contribute to the black hole's growth, potentially allowing it to increase in size by six times.

Both Matt Bradford's team and a separate group utilized advanced telescopes to analyze the quasar and its surrounding materials, revealing molecules never before detected at such great distances.

Bradford's team began collecting data in 2008 and confirmed their findings with various telescopes, including the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy.

Quasars, first identified over fifty years ago, are incredibly bright objects powered by supermassive black holes, providing insights into the early universe's structure.

The study detailing these findings was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, challenging previous assumptions about cosmic conditions in the universe's infancy.

This discovery enhances our understanding of how life's building blocks may have formed in the early universe and their influence on star and galaxy evolution.

Matt Bradford from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory led one of the teams studying the quasar, emphasizing the unique environment that produced such a large mass of water.