The Holy book of Quran mentioned that God throne was on water and all the universe once was water , and that started from the gazes and dokhan ( smoke) .
So our universe started from gazes then form the water that once covered all the universe before God split the universe to levels and created the Earth , suns, moons, and the stars .
This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM 08279+5255, where astronomers discovered huge amounts of water vapor. Image credit: NASA/ESA
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Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.
“The environment around this quasar is very unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” said Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.” Bradford leads one of the teams that made the discovery. His team’s research is partially funded by NASA and appears in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A quasar is powered by an enormous black hole that steadily consumes a surrounding disk of gas and dust. As it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. Both groups of astronomers studied a particular quasar called APM 08279+5255, which harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.
Astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early, distant universe, but had not detected it this far away before. 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.
Water vapor is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of the quasar. In this particular quasar, the water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years in size (a light-year is about six trillion miles). Its presence indicates that the quasar is bathing the gas in X-rays and infrared radiation, and that the gas is unusually warm and dense by astronomical standards. Although the gas is at a chilly minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) and is 300 trillion times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere, it’s still five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what’s typical in galaxies like the Milky Way.
Measurements of the water vapor and of other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggest there is enough gas to feed the black hole until it grows to about six times its size. Whether this will happen is not clear, the astronomers say, since some of the gas may end up condensing into stars or might be ejected from the quasar.
Bradford’s team made their observations starting in 2008, using an instrument called “Z-Spec” at the California Institute of Technology’s Submillimeter Observatory, a 33-foot (10-meter) telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Follow-up observations were made with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA), an array of radio dishes in the Inyo Mountains of Southern California.
The second group, led by Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at Caltech and deputy director of the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, used the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps to find water. In 2010, Lis’s team serendipitously detected water in APM 8279+5255, observing one spectral signature. Bradford’s team was able to get more information about the water, including its enormous mass, because they detected several spectral signatures of the water.
Other authors on the Bradford paper, “The water vapor spectrum of APM 08279+5255,” include Hien Nguyen, Jamie Bock, Jonas Zmuidzinas and Bret Naylor of JPL; Alberto Bolatto of the University of Maryland, College Park; Phillip Maloney, Jason Glenn and Julia Kamenetzky of the University of Colorado, Boulder; James Aguirre, Roxana Lupu and Kimberly Scott of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Hideo Matsuhara of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan; and Eric Murphy of the Carnegie Institute of Science, Pasadena.
Funding for Z-Spec was provided by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Research Corporation and the partner institutions.
Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information about JPL is online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov .
The Big Bang
10 to 20 billion years ago, the Universe was in an extremely dense and hot (~10 billion °C !) state that exploded in what astronomers call The Big Bang. Eventually, the Universe expanded and cooled and huge collections of gas formed into billions of separate galaxies, and billions of stars formed within each. Many fundamental particles were formed in the beginning of this process, including the basic building blocks of all atoms: protons, neutrons, and electrons. The two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, were also formed. Hydrogen consists of one proton with one electron circling it. Helium consists of two protons and two electrons. (Different isotopes of these elements were also formed, consisting of different numbers of neutrons within them.)
Current models of the Big Bang predict that hydrogen should have been produced three times more abundantly than helium. Indeed, this proportion has been deduced by astronomers in observations of hydrogen and helium in the Universe. Some heavier elements were created in the Big Bang, but only in very trace amounts, e.g., one lithium atom (with 3 protons, 3 electrons) out of every 10 billion atoms. So how are the heavier elements, such as oxygen, formed? They are synthesized during the evolution of stars.
Stellar Evolution
Stars like our Sun produce huge amounts of energy from nuclear fusion in their hot cores. Stars contain mostly hydrogen. The pressure and temperature is so great in the core that hydrogen is fused together to form helium. Since the mass of helium is less than that of the hydrogen necessary to create it, energy is released according to Einstein’s formula: E = mc2, where E is the energy, m is the difference in mass, and c is the speed of light. 90 per cent of a star’s lifetime is spent fusing hydrogen into helium. Once the hydrogen is used up, helium begins fusing and one of the by products of that process is oxygen. Depending on the mass of the star, all the heavy elements up to iron can be created in succeeding fusion reactions or nucleosynthesis.
At this point, you might be wondering how the oxygen that formed in the core of stars ever got incorporated into our planet! Well, one rather dramatic way occurs at the end of a very massive star’s life. Once iron is formed in the core of these stars, there are no further nuclear reactions that are stable enough to fuse the iron. Without, the output of energy to balance the star’s inward gravity, the star collapses upon itself, leading to its destruction in a supernova explosion. (By the way, a supernova is as bright as an entire galaxy!)
A supernova remnant formed from the exploded star expands outward and eventually all the elements within it are spread throughout the galaxy and mix into the region between the stars (the interstellar medium). Over time, denser regions of the interstellar medium form into giant interstellar clouds of gas and dust. These clouds are stellar nurseries in which numerous stars will be born. Around each star, residual gas and dust slowly congregates and forms into planets. Thus, the planets and ourselves, are in fact, all made out of star-stuff!
Now, given the creation of hydrogen in the Big Bang and oxygen in nucleosynthesis in stars, and the fact that these elements are highly reactive chemically, water should therefore be fairly common in the Universe. However, only at certain temperatures and pressure, like those we find on Earth, would we expect to find liquid water.
Detecting Water Beyond the Earth
Spacecraft have at least partially explored all the planets around the Sun except Pluto. However, an analyses of the chemistry of a sample of the surface or of the atmosphere of each of the planets has been quite limited. Therefore, detecting water in the Universe up to now has been done almost entirely remotely. Fortunately, the composition of a planet’s atmosphere and surface can be partially determined by analyzing the spectrum of light emitted or absorbed by the elements that compose it. A spectrum is a display of the intensity of light emitted at each wavelength. A spectroscope splits the light into its components, like a prism which shows the different colors (wavelengths) making up white light.
Only light of specific wavelengths can be emitted by atoms of a given element. Similarly, each type of molecules has a unique spectrum of light. Thus, if the spectrum of water is found to be present in the full spectrum of light that we observe from a given planet, we can infer the existence of water on that planet. Water molecules have been detected in this manner in the atmospheres and the surfaces of some of the planets.
Specifically, the following is a partial list of evidence of the existence of water in the universe, detected spectroscopically and by other means:
- Ice on the Moon: Over the last couple of years, spacecraft orbiting the Moon have used radar to study its surface. The reflection of the radar signals from craters near the poles indicates that there may be a large amount of subsurface ice there.
- Comets: Comets are chunks of dust and frozen gases including water that are in highly oblong (elliptical or hyperbolic) orbits around the Sun. They are sometimes referred to as “dirty snowballs” although they are many kilometers in size. As they near the Sun, the sunlight melts some of the comet’s material which results in a long tail. Some astronomers have raised the possibility that comets have fed the oceans with water through numerous collisions with the Earth over the aeons.
- Mars: Even the earliest spacecraft photographs of the famous Red Planet show long jagged structures that appear to be old rivers and canyons. One canyon is as long as the United States! Photographs taken recently by the Pathfinder lander show stacked boulders that were probably deposited by raging floods. However, the atmospheric pressure on Mars is now 100 times less than ours and, therefore, water cannot exist as a liquid there anymore. It is possible that much of the water exists as subsurface ice. There are polar ice caps on Mars that get larger during the Martian winter and smaller in the summer. The ice caps are largely composed of frozen carbon dioxide, but small amounts of water-ice have also been detected.
- Europa: The Galileo spacecraft orbiting Jupiter has photographed its four largest moons. The surface of one of the moons, Europa, appears cracked with many fissures, as if it is made of ice that freezes and then thaws repeatedly. There may actually be a liquid ocean under the ice! Ganymede, another of the four moons, has a similar looking surface but to a lesser degree.
- Interstellar Clouds: The spectrum of water has been detected in interstellar gas/dust clouds. Water masers have even been detected. Maser stands for Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A laser, on the other hand, stands for (visible) Light Amplification … . Water molecules in masers in interstellar clouds are stimulated by the energies of nearby stars. Very powerful masers have also been detected near the centers of other galaxies.
Well, the following isn’t exactly “evidence of water” but it is an interesting tidbit:
- The Water Hole: The ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is based on the proposition that other civilizations are sending radio signals that we can detect. While the radio part of the spectrum is very large and contains billions of channels, one small window of the spectrum may be chosen by intelligent water-based life seeking to contact other intelligent water-based life. This communications window is called the “water hole” because it lies between the 21 cm wavelength of natural radio emission from hydrogen and the 18 cm wavelength of natural radio emission from OH molecules. These wavelengths really have nothing to do with water, but since water is made of two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen, the term “water hole” is too inviting to ignore!
One of Aristotle’s more famous quotes was, “All men naturally desire knowledge” (“πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοὺ εἰδέναι ὀρὲγονται φύσει”) (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1.980a.22). As a classical Greek philosopher, an ideology like this is required for producing many outstanding achievements. He was known as a philosopher, artist, and scientist. Greek-born, he started with humble beginnings by attending Plato’s academy; becoming one of the most widely known philosophers in human history. Aristotle wrote many books, one of them was On the Heavens (ΠΕΡΙ ΟΥΡΑΝΟΥ). We are still not sure when the book was officially written, but it was around 350 BCE. His ideas included the four common elements on Earth (earth, air, fire, water), and also a fifth element which we will discuss later. The book revolves around his observations regarding the universe. The theories of Aristotle were groundbreaking for his time and were used until roughly the 1500s CE until the writings of Copernicus.
Nature of the Universe
The first main component to Aristotle’s discussion is the nature of the universe. Aristotle concluded that three things make up a physically constituted entity: bodies and magnitudes, beings possessed of body and magnitude, and the principles of causes of these beings. Magnitude divided in one direction is a line, in two directions is a surface, and in three directions, a body. His view was much like our understanding today. We know a line (length) is one dimensional, a shape is two-dimensional (length & width), and most objects in our everyday life, including us, are three-dimensional (length, width, depth). This concept is over 2,000 years old.
He described the four elements of the world and nature – earth (heaviest), water, air, and fire (lightest) – and believed a fifth element existed (aether). To determine whether the body is light or heavy, Aristotle believed ‘lightness’ was the nature of moving away from the centre and ‘heaviness’ was the nature of moving toward the centre. The same goes for vertices; the lightest rises to the top, and heaviest moves downward. Aristotle was not the first person to propose the four elements. In the 5th century BCE, Anaximenes recorded the first proposal regarding the four elements making up everything. The elements, when combined, created qualities. Fire and Earth would make Dry; Water and Water would create Cold; Water combined with Air would result in Wet; and finally, Air and Fire would be Hot.
Motion
Aristotle took it one step further with his observations of motion. Aristotle postulated that all bodies have a natural way of moving, which could be regular or irregular. He believed that everything that moved was moved by something. The latter is only possible when the irregularity of the movement proceeds from either the mover or from the object moved or both. Basically, this is saying bodies could naturally move in a straight line or not all. This idea is actually a rudimentary form of Newton’s first law of motion (an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon). He also introduced a third option which was circular motion.
Aristotle noted that the motion of the body moving upward would be fire or air, and downward would be water or earth. This would mean the objects that could be effected by circular motion must be of an exalted substance. Circular motion is connected with more ‘heavenly bodies’ such as planets. The planets that were allowed to be in circular motion were spheres. These planets revolve around an Earth. He believed the initial motion of the objects was from a ‘prime body’ who acted on the outermost sphere. Since these spheres are moving in a circular motion, they could neither have weight or lightness as they cannot move naturally or unnaturally towards or away from the centre. The prime body was seen as always running and eternal, going past any other element. This element was known as aether or quintessence. Essentially, this was the fifth element which made up the Sun, planets and stars. Aether or αἰθήρ was described as a pure, perfect substance, which is unlike anything else on Earth.
Geocentric Model
The model created by Aristotle was a part of multiple examples described as the geocentric model. His model had a total of 55 objects in his idea of the universe. At the centre of the universe laid Earth. From the centre to the farthest exterior, the objects were as follows: Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Past Saturn, stars were in a fixed position. The interesting part is if we change the position of the Earth and the Sun, then bring the moon to Earth, it would be pretty similar to our current model. This model and many like it lasted until the 16th century CE. Aristotle’s universe gradually ended near the stars. The stars were the line between the universe seen by man. Past the stars laid spiritual space where mankind could never go.
Aristotle also created a theory on how the Earth was created and how the universe is laid out. He believed the Earth had always existed and was in an almost eternal state. The Earth, to his understanding, was unchanged and always provided a perfect circular motion for the revolving bodies. Aristotle argued for a spherical Earth. Around this time, the idea of a flat earth was coming into question. The proof provided by Aristotle was a moon’s eclipse. When the moon eclipses, the boundary is always convex. So if the eclipses are due to the interposition of the earth, the shape must be caused by its circumference. Also, he mentioned that the stars provide evidence of Earth also being of no great size. His explanation was if an individual stood in Egypt, while another stood in Cyprus, they would see different sets of stars due to how small the Earth is. A vast change over a small amount of space. Since the Earth was in the centre and always existed, the next question Aristotle had was whether or not the Earth was unique.
Is Earth Unique?
Since the Earth is in the centre of the universe, and we live at the centre, does this mean the world is unique? Aristotle believed the Earth was unique and that mankind was alone in the universe. His hypothesis behind this was that if there were more than one world and the universe had more than one object at the centre, then elements like earth would have more than one natural place to fall to. The idea is that if multiple centres existed, the planets would be unable to revolve around Earth and have trouble understanding how to move. Remember, his idea of Earth, was that it was also the centre of motion. So by these standards, it makes sense for him to believe the Earth was unique.
The concepts put forth by Aristotle were incredible given the time. In roughly 350 BCE, he was able to identify rudimentary laws of motion prior to Newton’s famous three laws. The ability to create a hypothesis of objects being heavier or lighter depending on the distance to the centre is also no small feat. His universe model consisted of 55 objects that aided in his observations and predictions regarding the motion of the planetary objects. The insight put forth by Aristotle was scientific theory at a rudimentary level, based on our model today, and his research shows the use of a scientific process. Though Aristotle’s views were not all correct by today’s current research, he did lay the fundamental framework for those like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton. On the Heavens is just one of his many books that attempt to understand life, the universe, and everything. The examples used in this discussion are just the tip of the iceberg, and if anyone wants to read more on similar topics, please consider Physics and Meteorologica