Water Detected in Galaxy 12.8B Light Years from Earth Written 4 November 2021
Sparkling Galaxy as captured by Hubble Space Telescope. | T. Armandroff; ESA/Hubble & NASA
USA Today reports that scientists “have discovered evidence of water in a galaxy roughly 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, making it one of the most distant discoveries of water in the universe.” The galaxy, SPT-311-58, was discovered in 2017 by researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array in Chile. The scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found the water molecules from SPT-311-58 to be especially notable because the galaxy originated from an early stage in the universe’s life, “when it was only 780 million years old.” The presence of water in the galaxy “proves molecular life began not too long after the Big Bang.”
Full Story (USA Today)