
NASA finds water reservoir equivalent to 140 trillion times the world's oceans - tomeast
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html
======
mattdeboard
I understand NASA's PR team wants to make these headlines appealing to general
audiences, and generate pageviews, but they're making the mistake of
overpromising in the headline and underdelivering in the copy.

To normal people -- i.e. Not HackerNews readers -- read reservoir and think of
a resource we can tap for our curren needs, a "reserve" of water. It's not
that at all. NASA's PR team isn't doing their scientists any favors. It's not
some egregious sin or anything but I'd have chosen a different headline
altogether. Or maybe I'm just being a nitpicky former PR guy.

~~~
sorbus
The title on HN ("NASA finds water reservoir equivalent to 140 trillion times
the world's oceans") is not the title NASA uses on its article ("Astronomers
Find Largest, Most Distant Reservoir of Water"). It appears to be have created
by mashing together the first two sentences of the article - the first
describes it as a reservoir, the second describes its size relative to the
earth's oceans.

Don't blame NASA, blame the submitter.

~~~
podperson
I'd blame NASA for using the word "reservoir".

~~~
robtoo
I really don't think the regular layperson is going to be confused into
thinking we can tap into it as needed when _NASA_ describe it as the "Most
Distant Reservoir of Water" right there in the headline, the first sentence of
the article describes it as the "furthest reservoir of water", and the next
explains it is "12 billion light-years away".

And even if this hypothetical layperson doesn't know how far a light-year is,
12 billion certainly gets across the point that it is an awful lot of them.

~~~
Vivtek
If we can't tap into it, then it certainly isn't a reservoir. For headline
readers like myself, the choice of words is misleading.

~~~
jonnathanson
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted. It's technically accurate. The
definition of "reservoir" implies that a body of water is being collected or
stored for later use. A reservoir need not be artificially constructed (i.e.,
a well or drainage pool), but in order to be a "reservoir," it needs to be put
to use or accessible for use.

I am not a PR person myself, but I think the vast majority of laypeople who
stumble across the headline "large, distant reservoir" would assume that the
source is tappable. They might also ignore or not really understand the issue
of the 12 billion light years -- or the inconvenience, to say the least, of
the quasar nearby.

~~~
rickdale
I actually think this was a good move by the PR. I think most people
understand that space travel is in its newest form and by calling it a
reservoir NASA is challenging science so that one day this distant water can
become a practical reservoir.

~~~
podperson
Yes we just need to travel back in time to just after the beginning of the
universe to use it. Oh, and it's also a long way away.

------
thirsteh
And there goes Stephen Hawking's fearmongering about hostile aliens barbecuing
us for our water.

~~~
__rkaup__
Where did he write about that?

~~~
iqster
[http://www.millennium3.info/2010/04/26/stephen-hawking-
says-...](http://www.millennium3.info/2010/04/26/stephen-hawking-says-alien-
contact-a-bad-idea/)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/25/stephen-hawking-
ali...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/25/stephen-hawking-
aliens_n_551035.html#s84595&title=Charlie_Rose_)

Edit: Okay ... I give up. I wasted a lot of time googling for an original
source or a video where Hawking _actually_ said these things. My Google search
skillz are off this early in the AM and I can't bear to see more ads
associated with 1 minute clips. The story that humans should stop trying to
contact aliens (attributed to Hawking) became quite popular a few years ago. I
even recall someone from SETI saying how this is not what they are doing ...
rather, they are merely listening for signals from intelligent life that may
exist rather than attempting to initiate contact.

~~~
Jach
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1291969>

That's a HN submission with good comments, where he basically gives the plot
of independence day.

I'm more worried about alien life forms due to the Great Filter problem,
personally. Other life is bad news for our chances at a cosmic-proportion,
galaxy-changing Singularity.

------
jff
Based on the HN headline, I was hoping it was in the solar system, like they
just discovered the asteroid belt contained far more water than they thought
before... could be very useful for future space applications.

This is pretty cool too though.

~~~
swombat
A cloud containing 140 trillion times the amount of water in our oceans would
be pretty hard to miss if it was in our solar system! In fact, it might be
bigger than our solar system... Anyone care to do the quick estimate math?
(I'm on an iPad, impractical...)

~~~
chronomex
That would be a sphere of water with radius <0.25AU:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.3+billion+cubic+kilom...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.3+billion+cubic+kilometres+*+140+trillion)

(Ocean volume figure is from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean> )

------
dhughes
Not as good as the giant cloud of alcohol
[http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jodrell_Bank_Astronomers_S...](http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jodrell_Bank_Astronomers_Spy_Giant_Alcohol_Cloud.html)

~~~
smallblacksun
I'm holding out for the giant cloud of beer.

------
walkon
_There's water vapor in the Milky Way, although the total amount is 4,000
times less than in the quasar, because most of the Milky Way’s water is frozen
in ice._

How could they possibly know this?

~~~
sambeau
I am not an astronomer but I would guess they know this the same way they know
what anything in distant space (that does not give off light of its own) is
made-up of: they observe the light shining through it and see which part of
the spectrum is/is not filtered by it.

~~~
kingkawn
aka empirical evidence, yes, that is the basis of science.

------
xhuang
isn't it also means there was that much water xx billion light years ago, it
could be all gone now!

~~~
Cushman
Nope. "Right now, over there" is a phrase which has no meaning on astronomical
scales. There is no defined order for events which don't have a causal
connection.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity>

There exists a frame of reference in which the state that we see in that image
takes place at the same time as we read about it today. There's another frame
of reference where it happens billions of years ago, before the formation of
the Earth; another in which it happens in our future, long after our Sun has
evaporated into nothingness (Ed: There isn't actually, see below). All of
these perspectives are literally, completely equally valid. They're all
_real_.

There was a good discussion about this last time it came up here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907271>

~~~
sliverstorm
Your parent's point was simple and practical, not bound up in relativity.
Parent was merely observing that even though we see it (please do not launch
off into a metaphysical discussion about "what is seeing"), if we were to go
visit it, it could no longer be there for use to "use".

~~~
Cushman
You seem to think I'm quibbling over pedantry. I want to make it clear I'm not
talking about wacky theoretical physics here, let alone metaphysics— this is
hard science. You can't avoid getting "bound up in it"; relativity _is_ ,
definitely is, how our world works.

In our universe, "It could all be gone by now" not only isn't _true_ , it
doesn't even make logical sense. There is no one such thing as "now".

Now, "It could all be gone _by the time we get there_ " is a different,
totally practical and valid statement. But that's just because of the amount
of time it would take _us_ to cross that distance; it has nothing to do with
the distance that light has already traveled.

~~~
sliverstorm
I understand relativity is hard science.

While I agree you are not talking about wacky unproven theory, I am not sure I
agree that you are not being a pedant. Your parent's assertion is most
definitely plausible from the right frame of reference, and mainly written to
elicit amusement, but you insist on getting bogged down in the details
discussing how it is NOT plausible in other frames of reference, which is
quite frankly, besides the point.

~~~
Cushman
I guess I disagree it's beside the point. You say my parent's assertion is
plausible from the right frame of reference— what frame of reference are you
assuming my parent was referring to? Certainly not the one we're all in, where
we can see there remains plenty of water.

I'm inferring you understood it as something like "a frame of reference which
agrees with the theoretical frame of reference of a spaceship we launch today,
at the time it arrives at the reservoir". That seems far from obvious to me— I
find it much more likely that xhuang (like many other commenters on this
article, I should add, not to mention the public at large) has been misled by
pop-science into the thinking that something being twelve billion lightyears
away means that right now, whatever we're seeing is _actually_ twelve billion
years in the past.

But that's exactly wrong! There is no _actually_ , and what we see is as valid
to call "right now" as anything else. And this is the universe we live in!
Maybe I am a pedant, but this stuff is mind-bogglingly amazing when you can
actually wrap your head around it, so I try not to miss out on a relativity
teaching moment.

Anyhoot, _we_ obviously both get it, so I'll wait on xhuang to say whether my
comment was relevant to his point or not.

~~~
sbov
I would take the frame of reference of an observer at the location of the
water because that is your goal - it's what is meant by "over there".

Could you resolve the "right now" issue if you took a picture of the event to
said observer, who then compared it to a history of images and then said "oh
yeah, 5 minutes later it was all gone, never to return"?

These seem like a closer representation of what people mean when they say
"it's all gone now."

~~~
Cushman
See, you're making the same mistake— an observer at the location of the water
_when_? You want to say "now", but _there is no such thing_. Taking a picture
doesn't help the issue— you only wind up tangling yourself up in it.

This stuff was all figured out in the first place through thought experiments,
so let's try one to demonstrate what I mean. Let's say there are two real
events we can talk about here. Someone at the reservoir poses, the light takes
twelve billion years to get here, and we snap a photo. Then say there's a
second event, the draining of the reservoir, which happens (at the reservoir)
one year from the time the person poses.

What we want to know is, has that event happened yet, even though we observe
there to be water? So on your suggestion, as soon as we take the picture, I
jump on the spaceship with a copy and fly over there at near to the speed of
light. Twelve billion years after they posed, the person at the reservoir will
look up and see me lift off from Earth, and then very soon after I will arrive
carrying the picture to ask them about. (Of course I'll already have seen the
event I want to ask them about, but set that aside for now.)

Okay, so here's the fun part. While I'm travelling there, at very near to the
speed of light, _time stops_ for me, or very nearly. I perceive the journey to
take a matter of hours, say. I arrive at the reservoir carrying a still-wet
photograph to ask them about. They say, "Oh, yeah, that happened about twelve
billion years ago— a year before we drained the reservoir, wasn't it?"

"Ah hah!" I exclaim. "I had a hunch the water was already gone when I left."

The reservoir people think I'm nuts. "We drained the reservoir almost twelve
billion years ago. You only left Earth a couple of hours ago. Of _course_ the
water was gone."*

This is true. From my perspective, I have just taken a picture, flown for a
couple of hours, and the reservoir has been gone for billions of years. But,
no matter. Bearing my prize, a notarized letter affirming that the picture
depicts events one year prior the draining of the reservoir, I hop back in my
spaceship and make for Earth. Again, a journey of twelve billion lightyears
seems to take a manner of hours. On arrival, I disembark, waving the letter
triumphantly.

"See? We were right! The water was gone a mere year after we took the
picture."

"We know," says Earth. "We saw it happen one year after you left."

"...I haven't been gone for a year," I say with a sinking feeling in my gut.

"You've been gone for twenty-four billion years. We watched you leave, and one
year later the water was gone. A couple of hours ago we saw you arrive at the
reservoir, get the notarized letter, and lift off again; now you're here."

"No, no," I protest. "You only _think_ that just happened a couple of hours
ago. It takes light twelve billion years to travel that far, it's ancient
history by now. This letter is twelve billion years old."

Suddenly, it occurs to me that I am trying to argue that events that I
personally witnessed a couple of hours ago are, in fact, ancient history. I am
holding a still-drying photograph which Earth insists was taken twenty-four
billion years ago, and they have twenty-four billion years of history to prove
it; I am also holding a notarized letter which both I and the Earth have just
seen signed mere hours ago, and saying that it is twelve billion years old.
And yet I know that these objects are only hours apart in age.

I realize that if I flew back to the reservoir to get double-confirmation,
hours later they would say that they had just seen me arguing with Earth, and
they took my side, although according to their records the letter was actually
notarized _twenty-four_ billion years ago and not twelve as I had been
claiming. I realize that no matter how many trips I make, I will never be able
to make it so that I, the Earth, and the reservoir people agree about the
order of events.

"You know," I mention to the Earth, "I could have saved a lot of time if I had
just read the Wikipedia article on the Relativity of Simultaneity, couldn't
I."

"Yeah, probably," the Earth says. "Sorry about all your friends and stuff."

* cf. "a frame of reference which agrees with the theoretical frame of reference of a spaceship we launch today, at the time it arrives at the reservoir"

------
sek
I don't know what to do with these numbers. I can relate to our ocean in some
way, 2 times, 5 times, maybe 10 times the amount of water but higher numbers
are too much for me.

They should just use liter instead.

~~~
1880
Earth holds about 1.26x10^21 liters (source:
[http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophys...](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question157.htm)).
So 140 trillion times that would be 1.764x10^35, or about _176 decillion
liters_.

I don't know what to do with these numbers either.

~~~
brass_cannon
Given that the difference between our calculations is a result of the margin
of error in determining the Earth's ocean's volume, I wonder what the margin
of error is for NASA's measurement.

------
tucaz
How the hell they found something that is xx billion light years away? Isn't
that xx the amount of time that light (or whatever else) needs to get here so
they can see/measure it?

~~~
hollerith
Well, the light (well, x-rays, I think in this case) has been transiting space
for billions of years, then astronomers collected it. Astronomers collect
light that was produced billions of years ago every day.

Hope that helps!

~~~
ComputerGuru
In particular, this means that 12 billion years ago, there WAS a reservoir of
water of such and such size.... :-)

~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, yes and no. See Cushman's comment, above, on the relativity of
simultaneity.

In relativistic situations it really doesn't matter which verb tense you use.
Verb tenses are not designed for this sort of thing.

------
jdavid
If NASA is right about where there is water there is life, and or hydrogen
drives, then if there are billions of FTL species maybe they would (lol)
gravitate to a trillion planets worth of water.

"just saying that it might be a good place to look for more interesting
communication signals."

------
justhw
12 billion light years away huh? hmmm

------
willidiots
Better get started on the pipeline. LA's residents are thirsty.

~~~
uvdiv
LA residents are sitting next to an ocean. If they want water, they should
elect a government that will allow them to build desalination plants, as
opposed to one which creates artificial scarcity.

------
petegrif
That is insane.

------
vnchr
Good thing we cut their funding!

------
rkalla
Space is web-scale (how has no one else made this joke yet?)

~~~
palish
I don't get it. (But I didn't downvote.)

------
rwmj
I guess that rules out the plot of "V" ...

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/V_%281983_min...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/V_%281983_miniseries%29)

