Is that an intergalactic wave pool, or just a hungry, hungry
quasar? Turns out it's a bit of both -- well, not the wave pool
bit, but it's watery. A NASA-funded peep into the farthest
reaches of the cosmos has uncovered this "feeding black hole" 12
billion light years away. APM 08279+5255, as this compacted mass
of inescapable doom is affectionately known, has been gorging on
water vapor and spewing out energy. How much H2O exactly? It's
only the "largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected
in the universe," and it weighs in at 140 trillion times the
amount in our oceans. Located via the cooperation of two teams
of astronomers and their star-gazing equipment -- the Z-Space
instrument at California Institute of Technology's Submillimeter
Observatory in Hawaii and the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in
the French Alps -- this aqueous discovery proves the wet stuff
is more universally omnipresent than we once thought. Also,
surfing aliens, right?   Giant body of water found in space,
black hole claims i