6 ms·

Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Space

46 points by jordanchan 11y ago

DavidSJ 11y ago
Maybe we could bring some to California.
dmichulke 11y ago
I'm not sure I would apply superlatives when talking about a possibly infinite domain. Then again, it's not that I could claim this is the most pretentious headline produced by an intelligent human either.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
It's amazing how many words he spends saying "this large body of water is really quite large." I mean: > The official NASA news release describes the amount of water as "140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans," which isn’t particularly helpful, except if you think about it like this. > That one cloud of newly discovered space water vapor could supply 140 trillion planets that are just as wet as Earth is. Oh, so that's what that means! Gosh!
- GotAnyMegadeth 11y ago
  I think the line underneath was better "The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water."
- fridek 11y ago
  Replacing "140 trillion times the total water on Earth" with "enough to supply an entire planet's worth of water for every person on earth, 20,000 times over." wasn't a particularly good idea.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    I like 140 trillion earths figure, that's pretty unimaginable. 20,000 not so much.
- nutbutter 11y ago
  I'm not satisfied till I see it measured in toilet flushes.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    That number would be too large to fit in an ordinary person's brain. Let's instead continually flush all the toilets in Yankee Stadium twice per minute, to see how many years you could continue to do that. Still too big. Continually flush all the toilets on Earth twice a minute instead. So let's see... 1.335e21 L per ocean, 1.4e14 oceans per space cloud, ~6 L per flush, 1051898.4 flushes per toilet per Gregorian year, ~1.4e9 toilets on Earth. You could flush all the flush toilets currently installed on Earth, continuously, twice per minute, for 2.1e19 years. Still too big. That's 1.5 billion times the age of the universe. No one can truly grasp that magnitude. Let's multiply the number of Earths and try to fix the time at the approximate age of the Earth. So, divide by 4.5e9 years... There we go. You could continually flush all the currently installed flush toilets on Earth twice a minute over the entire history of the planet, on 4.7 billion identical Earths! Finally! A completely meaningless number that everyone can understand! ~
gjm11 11y ago
This article (like the discovery it reports) is from July 2011. The NASA press release can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe2011072... and it contains all the actual information in the article. (And: what a terrible article! On two occasions it simply says the exact same thing twice in succession in almost the same words. And it says this: "NASA’s water discovery should be a reminder that if we have the sophistication to discover galaxies full of water 12 billion light years away, we should be able to save people just an ocean away from drought-induced starvation." ... which makes as much sense as saying that if we have the sophistication to discover enormous black holes at the centres of galaxies, we ought to be able to make our own black holes in the laboratory, or that if we have the sophistication to accelerate protons to 0.999999991c in the LHC, we ought to be able to make cars go at at least 0.9c.)
farresito 11y ago
I bet Nestle has already bought it.
1971genocide 11y ago
Can we predict based on what we see the current status of the "cloud of water". Shouldn't it collapse into stars ? Or does the blackhole consume the entire cloud of water ! So many questions. Imagine if life existed within it. They must be wondering if life outside a "cloud of water" is even possible ? A planet ?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I recall (from the last time this was posted) that its like a few molecules of H2O per cubic meter. So more like a 'cloud of water vapor' or even 'a cloud of water plasma'. It was made by the expanding shock wave from a supernova, through a gas cloud of mostly hydrogen. Lots got fused to oxygen, and then they combined. The tremendous amount of water is because its a vast expanding volume of space.
lighthawk 11y ago
Meh... some alien civilization probably used it all on irrigation by now.
- jordanchan 11y ago
  Hydroponics using atmospheric humidity maybe?
sageabilly 11y ago
This would make an awesome premise for a sci-fi book. A plot along the lines of "Humanity must stop This Bad Thing but to do so they need Lots of Water but they have used up all the water so they have to Pull Together in Time of Crisis in order to retrieve all the water while contending with the fact that the water is around a black hole." Maybe throw in some serendipitously discovered alien technology that makes it all possible. I think that it would make for a truly epic space opera if written by the right author.
- austinjp 11y ago
  So the original Total Recall, then? :)
- blincoln 11y ago
  Ice Pirates? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/
- jordanchan 11y ago
  They just started YC research. Maybe its time for YC Movies...
robodale 11y ago
...but does the black hole have rights to that water? Answer: NO!
MrBunny 11y ago
so would it be safe to assume every planet/moon should have some amount of water? In one form or another. Should it be less of a surprise?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
...four years ago. This has been discussed here before?

46 points by jordanchan 11y ago

Maybe we could bring some to California.

I'm not sure I would apply superlatives when talking about a possibly infinite domain. Then again, it's not that I could claim this is the most pretentious headline produced by an intelligent human either.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

It's amazing how many words he spends saying "this large body of water is really quite large." I mean: > The official NASA news release describes the amount of water as "140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans," which isn’t particularly helpful, except if you think about it like this. > That one cloud of newly discovered space water vapor could supply 140 trillion planets that are just as wet as Earth is. Oh, so that's what that means! Gosh!

GotAnyMegadeth 11y ago
I think the line underneath was better "The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water."
fridek 11y ago
Replacing "140 trillion times the total water on Earth" with "enough to supply an entire planet's worth of water for every person on earth, 20,000 times over." wasn't a particularly good idea.
- x5n1 11y ago
  I like 140 trillion earths figure, that's pretty unimaginable. 20,000 not so much.
nutbutter 11y ago
I'm not satisfied till I see it measured in toilet flushes.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  That number would be too large to fit in an ordinary person's brain. Let's instead continually flush all the toilets in Yankee Stadium twice per minute, to see how many years you could continue to do that. Still too big. Continually flush all the toilets on Earth twice a minute instead. So let's see... 1.335e21 L per ocean, 1.4e14 oceans per space cloud, ~6 L per flush, 1051898.4 flushes per toilet per Gregorian year, ~1.4e9 toilets on Earth. You could flush all the flush toilets currently installed on Earth, continuously, twice per minute, for 2.1e19 years. Still too big. That's 1.5 billion times the age of the universe. No one can truly grasp that magnitude. Let's multiply the number of Earths and try to fix the time at the approximate age of the Earth. So, divide by 4.5e9 years... There we go. You could continually flush all the currently installed flush toilets on Earth twice a minute over the entire history of the planet, on 4.7 billion identical Earths! Finally! A completely meaningless number that everyone can understand! ~

gjm11 11y ago

This article (like the discovery it reports) is from July 2011. The NASA press release can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe2011072... and it contains all the actual information in the article. (And: what a terrible article! On two occasions it simply says the exact same thing twice in succession in almost the same words. And it says this: "NASA’s water discovery should be a reminder that if we have the sophistication to discover galaxies full of water 12 billion light years away, we should be able to save people just an ocean away from drought-induced starvation." ... which makes as much sense as saying that if we have the sophistication to discover enormous black holes at the centres of galaxies, we ought to be able to make our own black holes in the laboratory, or that if we have the sophistication to accelerate protons to 0.999999991c in the LHC, we ought to be able to make cars go at at least 0.9c.)

farresito 11y ago

I bet Nestle has already bought it.

1971genocide 11y ago

Can we predict based on what we see the current status of the "cloud of water". Shouldn't it collapse into stars ? Or does the blackhole consume the entire cloud of water ! So many questions. Imagine if life existed within it. They must be wondering if life outside a "cloud of water" is even possible ? A planet ?

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I recall (from the last time this was posted) that its like a few molecules of H2O per cubic meter. So more like a 'cloud of water vapor' or even 'a cloud of water plasma'. It was made by the expanding shock wave from a supernova, through a gas cloud of mostly hydrogen. Lots got fused to oxygen, and then they combined. The tremendous amount of water is because its a vast expanding volume of space.

lighthawk 11y ago

Meh... some alien civilization probably used it all on irrigation by now.

jordanchan 11y ago
Hydroponics using atmospheric humidity maybe?

sageabilly 11y ago

This would make an awesome premise for a sci-fi book. A plot along the lines of "Humanity must stop This Bad Thing but to do so they need Lots of Water but they have used up all the water so they have to Pull Together in Time of Crisis in order to retrieve all the water while contending with the fact that the water is around a black hole." Maybe throw in some serendipitously discovered alien technology that makes it all possible. I think that it would make for a truly epic space opera if written by the right author.

austinjp 11y ago
So the original Total Recall, then? :)
blincoln 11y ago
Ice Pirates? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/
jordanchan 11y ago
They just started YC research. Maybe its time for YC Movies...

robodale 11y ago

...but does the black hole have rights to that water? Answer: NO!

MrBunny 11y ago

so would it be safe to assume every planet/moon should have some amount of water? In one form or another. Should it be less of a surprise?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

...four years ago. This has been discussed here before?