Astronomers Clarify 2011 Quasar Water Find at Redshift 3.91 as 140 Trillion-Ocean Figure Proves Model-Dependent
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 15
Astronomers Clarify 2011 Quasar Water Find at Redshift 3.91 as 140 Trillion-Ocean Figure Proves Model-Dependent
1 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 15
Summary
APM 08279+5255’s 2011 “water reservoir” was not a newly found liquid body but diffuse vapor seen in spectral lines from a quasar host when the universe was about 1.6 billion years old.
Six water transitions, observed over 25.3 hours with Z-Spec and checked by other teams, showed water vapor at redshift 3.91 and let astronomers use it to trace radiation, density and temperature around a feeding supermassive black hole.
The oft-cited 140 trillion Earth-oceans figure came from modeling water abundance against a huge molecular-gas reservoir—about 100,000 solar masses of vapor—not from directly weighing water.
Those giant numbers remain uncertain because gravitational lensing magnifies the quasar; changing the lens model alters inferred luminosity, size and water mass, though it does not erase the detected spectral lines.
The durable result is narrower but stronger: abundant water vapor already existed 12 billion light-years back and served as a probe of extreme galactic conditions in the early universe.