NASA finds water reservoir equivalent to 140 trillion times the world's oceans

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.<p>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.

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

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.<p>This is pretty cool too though.

Not as good as the giant cloud of alcohol <a href="http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jodrell_Bank_Astronomers_Spy_Giant_Alcohol_Cloud.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Jodrell_Bank_Astronomers_S...</a>

<i>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.</i><p>How could they possibly know this?

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

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.<p>They should just use liter instead.

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?

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

12 billion light years away huh? hmmm

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

That is insane.

Good thing we cut their funding!

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

I guess that rules out the plot of "V" ...<p><a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/V_%281983_miniseries%29" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/V_%281983_min...</a>