Intimacy of Four Massive Black Holes and Quasars Quartet 10 Billion Years Ago, Stuns Astronomers
Recent discovery of a first quasar quartet may force cosmologists to alter their understanding about some of the largest cosmic bodies.
The quartet was discovered by astronomers using the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii. A false-color image released by the team shows four quasars engulfed in a giant nebula of cool gas. The quasars are said to be 10 billion light years away and hence the image shows their state four billion years after the Big Bang.
While finding a quasar quartet is as rare as one in ten million, researchers believe the region of its find in the sky, offers some explanation.
"There are several hundred times more galaxies in this region than you would expect to see at these distances," said Xavier Prochaska, a professor at UC Santa Cruz who led the study.
Quasars are among the most luminous objects in the universe as they represent accretion of matter into massive black holes at the center of galaxies. Never before has a quartet of quasars been sighted leave alone one in engulfed in a cold and dense nebula, which left the researchers wondering if a fresh look at current models of such objects is warranted.
"Our current models of cosmic structure formation based on supercomputer simulations predict that massive objects in the early universe should be filled with rarefied gas that is about ten million degrees, whereas this giant nebula requires gas thousands of times denser and colder," said study's co-author Sebastiano Cantalupo.
