(Image source: NASA)

BY: STEVEN SPARKMAN

If you like science stories with big numbers, stay tuned. Astronomers have discovered the largest body of water in the universe -- and it’s only 70 billion trillion miles away.

The Daily Mail explains:

“Looking into a quasar -- one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos -- researchers have found a mass of water vapour that’s at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world’s oceans combined, and 100,000 times bigger than the sun." 

A quasar is a giant black hole devouring a cloud of gas -- and emitting tons of energy in the process. We’ll let Ars Technica give you the big numbers.

“At the center of [this quasar] is a supermassive black hole that is 20 billion solar masses. It puts out more than 65,000 times the energy that the entire Milky Way does." 

The quasar has 4,000 times more water vapor than our entire galaxy. What’s really getting scientists excited, though, is how it was found.

They measured extremely high-frequency waves with extremely sensitive equipment. And a writer for Wired says -- improved technology in the field promises more big finds. (Image source: NASA)

“Over the last two to three decades, this technique has allowed astronomers to find trace gases, including water vapor, in the earliest universe. Astronomers are now building a new telescope that specializes in these wavelengths. … it would allow cosmic researchers to hunt out primordial galaxies and more accurately study their composition." 

At 12 billion light years away, this particular quasar is 12 billion years old. The find demonstrates how prevalent water was in the early universe, just 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang.

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Transcript by Newsy.