Quasars, the brightest and most powerful objects in the universe, cause galaxies to begin their death throes, and scientists have found their fuel.
The brightest and most powerful objects in the cosmos, quasars, are responsible for galaxies entering their “death throes,” and astronomers announced that they have established what fires quasars.
The researchers warned that in a few billion years, the Milky Way might meet the same fate as previous supermassive black holes that develop when two galaxies collide.
Some quasars are so densely packed that they shine as brightly as a trillion stars, making them one of the most extreme things in the cosmos. They are the extremely brilliant, supermassive black hole-driven centers of galaxies that require a lot of gas.
Since their discovery in the 1950s, however, the question of what causes quasars has been hotly contested. An international team of academics recently claimed to have “clear evidence” that the massive quantities of energy required to create a quasar are liberated when two galaxies collide.
This, according to astronomer and co-author of the research, Clive Tadhunter of the University of Sheffield in the UK, comments AFP. The Andromeda Galaxy, which is not far away, is “coming directly towards us at about 200 kilometers (125 miles) a second,” he added.
In around five billion years, it will collide with the Milky Way, and “we could get a quasar” as a consequence. He went on to say that quasars expel all the gas in a galaxy, making it impossible for new stars to develop.
The study compared the observations of 100 galaxies without central quasars to those of 48 galaxies containing quasars. According to the research, galaxies that contain quasars have a threefold increased likelihood of galaxy collisions.
Although the theory that such collisions cause quasars has been around for a while, concrete proof has been difficult to come by. This, according to Tadhunter, is because previous studies were often made with telescopes more suited to seeing objects in the center of galaxies than the deformed structures at their borders, which signal prior collisions.
It was found that the Hubble Space Telescope “washes out” these nebulous formations.The researchers relied on terrestrial observatories, including the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma, Spain. According to Tadhunter, quasars “act like beacons to the distant universe” because of their extreme luminosity. He speculated that the James Webb Space Telescope, which has a far larger aperture than Hubble, will shed light on quasars in the early universe.
The new study analyzed prior studies to demonstrate how they may have missed the hints of collisions; it was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Leave a Reply