Fast Company reports that scientists have found a cloud of water, circling a quasar, so massive that it has enough water to fill the planets of 28 galaxies. The cloud is generated by the black hole's waves of energy which "make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together."
Equally stunning is the age of the water factory. The two teams of astrophysicists that found the quasar were looking out in space a distance of 12 billion light years. That means they were also looking back in time 12 billion years, to when the universe itself was just 1.6 billion years old. They were watching water being formed at the very start of the known universe, which is to say, water was one of the first substances formed, created in galactic volumes from the earliest time. Given water’s creative power to shape geology, climate and biology, that’s dramatic.
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