Quasars are galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centres. These black holes are surrounded by spinning discs of extremely hot material that is often spewed out in long jets along their axes of rotation. Quasars can shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together.
A team led by Damien Hutsemékers from the University of Liège in Belgium used the FORS instrument on the VLT to study 93 quasars that were known to form huge groupings spread over billions of light-years, seen at a time when the Universe was about one third of its current age. "The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars' rotation axes were aligned with each other—despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years," said Hutsemékers.
The team then went further and looked to see if the rotation axes were linked, not just to each other, but also to the structure of the Universe on large scales at that time.
Spooky Alignment of Quasars across Billions of Light-Years.
from the action-at-a-distance dept.
AnonTechie writes:
Quasars are galaxies with very active supermassive black holes at their centres. These black holes are surrounded by spinning discs of extremely hot material that is often spewed out in long jets along their axes of rotation. Quasars can shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together.
A team led by Damien Hutsemékers from the University of Liège in Belgium used the FORS instrument on the VLT to study 93 quasars that were known to form huge groupings spread over billions of light-years, seen at a time when the Universe was about one third of its current age.
"The first odd thing we noticed was that some of the quasars' rotation axes were aligned with each other—despite the fact that these quasars are separated by billions of light-years," said Hutsemékers.
The team then went further and looked to see if the rotation axes were linked, not just to each other, but also to the structure of the Universe on large scales at that time.
http://phys.org/news/2014-11-spooky-alignment-quasars-billions-light-years.html
[Source]: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1438/
[Paper]: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1438/eso1438a.pdf
Post Comment