The Hubble Space Telescope has made yet another exciting discovery, with researchers observing two gravitationally locked quasars producing enormous amounts of light within two merging galaxies. The press release claims that the quasars were there when the cosmos was just three billion years old, which has left astronomers fascinated by the universe’s dynamic environment for the merger or collision of space objects.
Quasars are objects that produce a lot of energy as they absorb gas, dust, and everything else in their gravitational field. They are fueled by supermassive black holes. The study, which appeared in the journal Nature, highlighted the results of locating a pair of quasars, which is a relatively recent field of study. Contemporary technologically advanced astronomical observatories have made it possible for researchers to identify the regions where the quasars are active.
According to NASA, there is ample evidence that tiny components combine to create enormous systems and structures. In the same manner, such mergers also make up galaxies. Supermassive black hole couples developed inside of two galaxies when they merged. Understanding about the progenitor population of black holes will ultimately inform us about the birth of supermassive black holes in the early universe and how frequent those mergers may be.
The Hubble Space Telescope’s image clearly distinguishes between two supermassive black holes and two quasars. “This twin quasar is no longer there because Hubble looks into the distant past. These host galaxies have most likely evolved into a massive elliptical galaxy, similar to those visible in the nearby cosmos today, over the past 10 billion years,” said NASA. “The massive black hole in the neighboring large elliptical galaxy M87 weighs 6.5 billion times as much as the Sun. Maybe during the course of the previous billions of years, one or more galaxy mergers caused this black hole to expand,” NASA stated.
Yu-Ching Chen, the study’s principal author, said in a statement that “At this early stage of the cosmos, we don’t witness many double quasars. And for that reason, this finding is so thrilling.” University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher Xin Liu thought “We’re only beginning to scratch the surface of the early binary quasar population. This is what makes this study special. We now have a mechanism to recognize twin quasars that are separated by less than the size of a single galaxy, so it is literally telling us that this population is real.”
“Hubble’s sensitivity and resolution gave photographs that allow us to rule out alternative possibilities for what we are seeing,” Chen added. The discovery of this pair of quasars will lead to further research on the early universe, black holes, and galaxy mergers. With the help of advanced technology and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers hope to uncover more mysteries and gain a better understanding of the universe.
