   The distant quasar is one of the most powerful known objects
in the universe and has an energy output of 1,000 trillion suns
-- about 65,000 times that of the Milky Way galaxy. The quasar's
power comes from matter spiraling into the central supermassive
black hole, estimated at some 20 billion times the mass of our
sun, said study leader Matt Bradford of Caltech and NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  Because the quasar --
essentially a voraciously feeding black hole -- is so far away,
its light has taken 12 billion light years to arrive at Earth.
Since one light year equals about 6 trillion miles, the
observations reveal a time when the universe was very young,
perhaps only 1.6 billion years old. Astronomers believe the
universe was formed by the Big Bang roughly 13.6 billion years
ago.   In an astronomical context, water is a trace gas, but it
indicates gas that is unusually warm and dense, said Bradford.
"In this case, the water measurement shows that the gas is under
the influence of