The largest reservoir of water in the known universe

The largest reservoir of fresh water on earth is glacier ice.  But what is the largest reservoir of water in the universe?   In an article for CNN last week, Yale’s Meg Urry described a new scientific discovery: a reservoir of water, in space, that is 140 trillion times the size of earth’s oceans.

The water is in the form a huge, glowing cloud of molecules, orbiting a giant black hole.  It would be nice if we could get our hands on this space aquifer (ok, it’s actually called a mega-maser), but unfortunately, it’s 12 billion light years away, and the photons making up the image that we currently see are at least 10 billion years old.  By the time we get to it, who knows what shape it will be in!

Too bad… here on earth we could really use that water right now.  But pending  the invention of worm-hole technology, the only water that we will ever have is what we’ve already got.  We better use it wisely.