Quasars Archives

December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 by Matthew Cimone

A Galaxy is Making New Stars Faster Than its Black Hole Can Starve Them for Fuel

Computer Simulation of a Quasar, a Supermassive Black Hole that is actively feeding and creating tremendous energy - created in "SpaceEngine" pro by author

A monster lurks at the heart of many galaxies – even our own Milky Way. This monster possesses the mass of millions or billions of Suns. Immense gravity shrouds it within a dark cocoon of space and time – a supermassive black hole. But while hidden in darkness and difficult to observe, black holes can also shine brighter than an entire galaxy. When feeding, these sleeping monsters awaken transforming into a quasar – one of the Universe’s most luminous objects. The energy a quasar radiates into space is so powerful, it can interfere with star formation for thousands of light years across their host galaxies. But one galaxy appears to be winning a struggle against its awoken blazing monster and in a recent paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers are trying to determine how this galaxy survives.

Animation of Interstellar Matter Falling into a Black Hole Creating a Quasar – ESA

November 30, 2020November 30, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

New jets seen blasting out of the center of a galaxy

Artist's impression of a quasar and a relativistic jet emanating from the center. Credit: NASA

Giant black holes can launch jets that extend for tens of thousand of light-years, blasting clean out of their host galaxies. These jets can last for tens of millions of years. Recently astronomers have spotted the first-ever jet in the process of forming, creating a cavity in the span of only twenty years.

September 3, 2020September 3, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

Some Quasars Actually Contain Two Supermassive Black Holes in the Process of Merging

Artist rendering of a binary black hole. Credit: NASA

Quasars are some of the most powerful objects in the Universe. They were first discovered in the 1950s as bright radio sources coming from almost point-like objects. They were given the name quasi-stellar radio sources, or quasars for short. We now know that they are powered by supermassive black holes at the center of distant galaxies.

September 1, 2020September 1, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Quasars can twinkle?

This illustration depicts a gas halo surrounding a quasar in the early Universe. The quasar, in orange, has two powerful jets and a supermassive black hole at its centre, which is surrounded by a dusty disc. The gas halo of glowing hydrogen gas is represented in blue. A team of astronomers surveyed 31 distant quasars, seeing them as they were more than 12.5 billion years ago, at a time when the Universe was still an infant, only about 870 million years old. They found that 12 quasars were surrounded by enormous gas reservoirs: halos of cool, dense hydrogen gas extending 100 000 light years from the central black holes and with billions of times the mass of the Sun. These gas stashes provide the perfect food source to sustain the growth of supermassive black holes in the early Universe.

It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. With a recent upgrade to a 50-year-old radio telescope, astronomers have spotted nearly a dozen of a rare class of quasars, ones capable of flickering in less than an hour.

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 by Evan Gough

Quasars are the Biggest Particle Accelerators in the Universe

Composite image of Centaurus A, showing the jets emerging from the galaxy’s central black hole, together with the associated gamma radiation. © ESO/WFI (Optical); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (Submillimetre); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray), H.E.S.S. collaboration (Gamma)

We puny humans think we can accelerate particles? Look how proud we are of the Large Hadron Collider. But any particle accelerator we build will pale in comparison to Quasars, nature’s champion accelerators.

Those things are beasts.