The mystery of the enormous power of quasars has been solved after 60 years

First observed 60 years ago, the brightness of quasars is so intense that one would have to cram a trillion stars into a volume the size of our solar system to match it. It is known that the huge amount of energy released by the quasar is associated with the activity of the supermassive black holes that occupy the centers of many galaxies, but what could trigger such a powerful response has remained a mystery. The new work, which was recently published in “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” In which the Spanish astrophysicist C. Ramos Almeida, from the University of La Laguna, revealed that quasars are the result of a collision between galaxies.

The collisions were discovered when researchers, using depth imaging observations from the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma, noticed distorted structures in the outer regions of the quasar’s host galaxies.

Titanic collision

As astronomers are well aware, most galaxies contain supermassive black holes at their centers. Of course, galaxies also contain vast amounts of gas, though all of that material orbits, most of the time, at great distances from the centers of galaxies, and thus out of reach of black holes.

But the collision between galaxies changes everything, and this gas is pushed directly towards the center, that is, towards the jaws of the black hole, which begins to consume it in huge quantities. Just as this happens, the black hole begins to emit extraordinary amounts of energy in the form of radiation, giving rise to a very powerful phenomenon that we call a quasar.

A quasar’s flaring up is no joke, and it can have dire consequences for the galaxies that generate it: for example, its energy can fling all of a galaxy’s gas reserves out into space at once, preventing them from continuing. Formation of new stars over billions of years. At the moment, about 200,000 different quasars are known, all of them located at great distances from the Milky Way. However, it is likely that in about 5,000 million years, when our galaxy collides with Andromeda, which is approaching us at a speed of 400,000 km / h, it will generate its own quasar, which will begin to appear from anywhere in the Universe.

In the words of Clive Tadhunter, from the University of Sheffield and co-author of the study, “Quasars are one of the most extreme phenomena in the universe, and what we’ve seen likely marks the future of our galaxy, the Milky Way, when it collides with the Andromeda galaxy in about five billion years.” “It’s exciting to watch these events and finally understand why they happened. Hopefully, Earth won’t be near one of these horrific episodes for some time.”

This is the first time quasars have been imaged with such sensitivity. By comparing observations of 48 quasars and their host galaxies with images of 100 other galaxies that do not contain quasars, the researchers concluded that those that do contain quasars are three times more likely to interact or collide with other galaxies.

Quasars are important to astrophysicists, because because of their enormous brightness, they stand out at very great distances, and therefore they serve as real “beacons” that illuminate the most ancient eras in the history of the Universe. As Jonny Pearce of the University of Hertfordshire and first author of the article explains, “This is an area in which scientists around the world are eager to learn more: one of the main science drivers of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The goal was precisely to study the oldest galaxies in the universe, and Webb is capable of detecting even light From the most distant quasars, emitted nearly 13 billion years ago. Quasars play a key role in our understanding of the history of the universe, and possibly the future of the Milky Way as well.”