The brightest object in the universe. The brightest quasar of the young universe has been discovered, which will help unravel the secrets of the reionization era The brightest light in the universe
Thanks to the duo of a natural lens and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most bright quasar in the early universe, which provides additional insight into the birth of galaxies less than one billion years after big bang. Article describing the discovery presented in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters .
“If it were not for the natural space telescope, then the light from the object that reached the Earth would be 50 times weaker. The discovery shows that strongly lensed quasars do exist, despite the fact that we have been searching for them for more than 20 years and have never seen them at such vast distances before,” says Xiaohui Fan, lead author of the study from the University of Arizona (USA).
Quasars are extremely bright nuclei of active galaxies. The powerful glow of such objects is created by a supermassive black hole surrounded by an accretion disk. The gas falling into the space monster releases an incredible amount of energy that can be observed at all wavelengths.
The discovered object, cataloged as J043947.08 + 163415.7 (J0439+1634 for short), is no exception to this rule - its brightness is equivalent to about 600 trillion suns, and the supermassive black hole that creates it is 700 million times more massive than our star. .
However, alone, even the keen eye of Hubble cannot see such bright object located at a great distance from the earth. And here gravity and a happy accident come to his aid. A dim galaxy, located right between the quasar and the telescope, bends the light from J0439+1634 and makes it 50 times brighter than it would be without the effect of gravitational lensing.
The data obtained in this way showed that, firstly, the quasar is located at a distance of 12.8 billion light-years from us, and, secondly, its supermassive black hole not only absorbs gas, but also provokes the birth of stars at an amazing rate - up to 10,000 lights per year. For comparison, only one star is formed in the Milky Way during this period of time.
“The properties and remoteness of J0439+1634 make it a prime target for studying the evolution of distant quasars and the role of supermassive black holes in star formation,” said Fabian Walter, co-author of the study from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Germany).
An image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows an intermediate galaxy acting as a lens and amplified light from the quasar J0439+1634. Credit: NASA, ESA, X. Fan (University of Arizona)
Objects similar to J0439+1634 existed during the reionization of the young Universe, when the radiation from young galaxies and quasars heated up hydrogen that had cooled in the 400,000 years since the Big Bang. Thanks to this process, the Universe has turned from a neutral plasma into an ionized one. However, it is still not clear exactly which objects provided the reionizing photons, and quasars like the one discovered may help solve a long-standing mystery.
For this reason, the team continues to collect as much data as possible on J0439+1634. It is currently analyzing a detailed 20-hour spectrum taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope that will allow them to identify chemical composition and the temperature of intergalactic gas in the early universe. In addition, the ALMA array of radio telescopes, as well as the future NASA James Webb space telescope, will be involved in observations. With the collected data, astronomers hope to view the vicinity of the supermassive black hole within a radius of 150 light-years and measure the effect of its gravity on gas and star formation.
The term "quasar" itself was formed from the words quas istell a r and r adiosource, literally meaning: resembling a star. These are the brightest objects in our Universe, which have a very strong . They are classified as active galactic nuclei - they do not fit into the traditional classification.
Many consider them huge, intensively absorbing everything that surrounds them. The substance, approaching them, accelerates and heats up very strongly. Under influence magnetic field particles from a black hole gather into beams that scatter from its poles. This process is accompanied by a very bright glow. There is a version that quasars are galaxies at the beginning of their lives, and in fact, we see their appearance.
If we assume that a quasar is a kind of superstar that burns its constituent hydrogen, then it should have a mass of up to a billion solar!
But this contradicts modern science, which believes that a star with a mass of more than 100 solar masses will necessarily be unstable and, as a result, will decay. The source of their gigantic energy also remains a mystery.
Brightness
Quasars have enormous radiation power. It can exceed the radiation power of all the stars of an entire galaxy hundreds of times. The power is so great that we can see an object that is billions of light years away from us with an ordinary telescope.
The half-hour radiation power of a quasar can be comparable to the energy released during a supernova explosion.
The luminosity can exceed the luminosity of galaxies by thousands of times, and the latter are made up of billions of stars! If we compare the amount of energy produced per unit time by a quasar, then the difference will be 10 trillion times! And the size of such an object can be quite comparable with the volume.
Age
The age of these superobjects is determined by tens of billions of years. Scientists have calculated: if today the ratio of quasars and galaxies is 1: 100,000, then 10 billion years ago it was 1: 100.
Distances to quasars
Distances to remote objects of the Universe are determined using . All observed quasars are characterized by a strong redshift, that is, they are moving away. And the speed of their removal is simply fantastic. For example, for the object 3S196, the speed of 200,000 km / s (two thirds of the speed of light) was calculated! And before it, about 12 billion light years. For comparison, galaxies fly at maximum speeds of "only" tens of thousands of kilometers per second.
Some astronomers believe that both the energy flows from quasars and their distances are somewhat exaggerated. The fact is that there is no confidence in the methods of studying ultra-distant objects; for the entire time of intensive observations, it was not possible to determine the distances to quasars quite definitely.
variability
The real mystery is the variability of quasars. They change their luminosity with an extraordinary frequency; galaxies do not have such changes. The period of change can be calculated in years, weeks and days. The record is considered to be a 25-fold change in brightness in one hour. This variability is characteristic of all quasar radiation. Based on recent observations, it appears that about Most of the quasars are located near the centers of huge elliptical galaxies.
By studying them, the structure of the Universe and its evolution become more understandable to us.
The nearest quasar is 3C 273, which is located in a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Credit & Copyright: ESA / Hubble & NASA.
Shining so brightly that they outshine the ancient galaxies they inhabit, quasars are distant objects that are essentially black holes with an accretion disk billions of times more massive than our Sun. These powerful objects have fascinated astronomers since their discovery in the middle of the last century.
In the 1930s, Karl Jansky, a physicist at Bell Telephone Laboratories, discovered "stellar noise" that was most intense towards the central part of the Milky Way. In the 1950s, astronomers discovered a new type of object in our universe through the use of radio telescopes.
Because this object looked like a point, astronomers called it a "quasi-stellar radio source" or quasar. However, this definition is not entirely correct, since, according to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, only about 10 percent of quasars emit strong radio waves.
It took years of study to understand that these distant specks of light, which seemed to look like stars, are created by particles accelerating to speeds approaching the speed of light.
“Quasars are among the brightest and most distant celestial objects known. They are critical to understanding the evolution of the early universe,” said astronomer Bram Veneman of the Institute of Astronomy. Max Planck in Germany.
It is assumed that quasars are formed in those regions of the universe in which the total density of matter is much higher than the average.
Most quasars have been found billions of light years away. Since light takes a certain amount of time to travel this distance, studying quasars is very much like a time machine: we see an object as it was when the light left it, billions of years ago. Nearly all of the more than 2,000 quasars known to date are in young galaxies. Our Milky Way, like other similar galaxies, has probably already passed this stage.
In December 2017, the most distant quasar was discovered, which was more than 13 billion light-years from Earth. Scientists have been watching this object, known as J1342+0928, with interest since it appeared only 690 million years after the Big Bang. Quasars of this type can provide information about how galaxies evolve over time.
The bright quasar PSO J352.4034-15.3373 is located at a distance of 13 billion light years. Credit & Copyright: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Institution for Science. Quasars radiate millions, billions, and possibly even trillions of electron volts of energy. This energy exceeds the total amount of light from all the stars in the galaxy, so quasars shine 10-100 thousand times brighter than, for example, the Milky Way.
If quasar 3C 273, one of the brightest objects in the sky, were 30 light-years from Earth, it would appear as bright as the Sun. However, quasar 3C 273 is actually at least 2.5 billion light-years away.
Quasars belong to a class of objects known as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This also includes Seyfert galaxies and blazars. All these objects require a supermassive black hole for existence.
Seyfert galaxies are the weakest type of AGN, generating only about 100 kiloelectronvolts of energy. Blazars, like their cousins, quasars, emit much larger amounts of energy.
Many scientists believe that all three types of AGN are essentially the same objects, but located at different angles to us.
However, this amazing star in all respects is like a 10-watt light bulb, compared to the truly brightest objects in space, for example, the same quasars. These objects are blinding galactic cores that shine so intensely because of their hungry disposition. At their centers are supermassive black holes, devouring any matter around them. More recently, scientists have discovered the brightest representative. Its brightness exceeds the solar almost 600 trillion times.
The quasar, which scientists write about in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and called J043947.08 + 163415.7, is much brighter than the previous record holder - it glows with the power of 420 trillion suns. For comparison, the brightest galaxy ever discovered by astronomers has a luminosity of "only" 350 trillion stars.
“We did not expect to find a quasar brighter than the entire observable universe,” comments Xiaohui Fan, head of the study.
It is logical to ask: how did astronomers miss such a bright object and only discovered it now? The reason is simple. The quasar is located almost on the other side of the universe, at a distance of about 12.8 billion light years. It was only discovered by a strange physical phenomenon known as the gravitational lens.
Diagram showing how the gravitational lensing effect works
According to general theory According to Einstein's relativity, very massive objects in space use their gravitational force to bend the direction of light waves, literally causing them to bend around the source of gravity. In our case, the light from the quasar was distorted by a galaxy located almost in the middle between us and the source, which increased its luminosity by almost 50 times. In addition, in the case of strong gravitational lensing, several images of the background object can be observed at once, since the light from the source comes to us in different ways and, accordingly, will arrive at the observer at different times.
“Without such a strong level of magnification, we would not be able to see the galaxy in which it is located,” says Feigi Wan, another author of the study.
“Thanks to this magnification effect, we can even follow the gas around the black hole and find out what the overall effect this black hole has on its home galaxy.”
Gravitational lensing allows scientists to see objects in greater detail. Thus, it was found that the main brightness of the object falls on highly heated gas and dust falling into a supermassive black hole at the center of the quasar. However, a rather dense cluster of stars near the galactic center also adds some brightness. Astronomers have roughly calculated that the galaxy that hosts the brightest quasar produces about 10,000 new stars every year, which makes our Milky Way a real bummer against its background. In our galaxy, astronomers say, only one star is born per year on average.
The fact that such a bright quasar has only now been spotted shows once again how limited astronomers really are in their ability to detect these objects. The researchers say that due to distances, most quasars are identified by their red color, however, many of them can fall into the "shadow" of galaxies that are in front of these objects. These galaxies blur the images of quasars and make them more blue in color.
“We think that by now we may have missed 10 to 20 such objects. Just because they might not look like quasars to us because of their blueshift,” says Fan.
“This may indicate that our traditional way of searching for quasars may no longer work and we need to look for new ways to search and observe these objects. Possibly relying on the analysis of large datasets.”
The brightest quasar was confirmed by the MMT Observatory Telescope (Arizona, USA), after data about it flashed during the UK Infrared Telescope Hemisphere Survey, Pan-STARRS1 observations, and archival infrared data. NASA WISE Space Telescope. With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists were able to confirm that they are seeing a quasar using the gravitational lensing effect.
Thanks to rapid development technology, astronomers are making more and more interesting and incredible discoveries in the universe. For example, the title of "most large object in the Universe” passes from one find to another almost every year. Some open objects are so huge that they baffle even the best scientists of our planet with their existence. Let's talk about the ten largest of them.
Relatively recently, scientists discovered the largest cold spot in the universe. It is located in the southern part of the constellation Eridanus. With its length of 1.8 billion light years, this spot has baffled scientists. They had no idea that objects of this size could exist.
Despite the presence of the word “void” in the title (from the English “void” means “emptiness”), the space here is not completely empty. This region of space contains about 30 percent fewer galaxy clusters than its surroundings. According to scientists, voids make up to 50 percent of the volume of the universe, and this percentage, in their opinion, will continue to grow due to super-strong gravity, which attracts all the matter around them.
superblob
In 2006, the title of the largest object in the universe was given to the discovered mysterious cosmic “bubble” (or blob, as scientists usually call them). True, he retained this title for a short time. This 200-million-light-year-long bubble is a gigantic collection of gas, dust, and galaxies. With some caveats, this object looks like a giant green jellyfish. The object was discovered by Japanese astronomers when they were studying one of the regions of space known for the presence of a huge volume of cosmic gas.
Each of the three "tentacles" of this bubble contains galaxies that are four times denser than usual in the universe. The clusters of galaxies and balls of gas inside this bubble are called the Lyman-Alpha bubbles. It is believed that these objects began to appear about 2 billion years after the Big Bang and are real relics of the ancient Universe. Scientists suggest that the bubble in question formed when massive stars that existed back in early times space, suddenly became supernovae and threw huge volumes of gas into space. The object is so massive that scientists believe that it is, by and large, one of the first cosmic objects to form in the universe. According to theories, over time, more and more new galaxies will form from the accumulated gas here.
Shapley Supercluster
For many years, scientists believe that our galaxy at a speed of 2.2 million kilometers per hour is attracted through the Universe somewhere in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers suggest that the reason for this is the Great Attractor (Great Attractor), an object with such a force of gravity, which is already enough to attract entire galaxies to itself. True, scientists could not find out what kind of object it was for a long time. Presumably this object is located behind the so-called "zone of avoidance" (ZOA), an area in the sky, covered by the Milky Way galaxy.
However, over time, X-ray astronomy came to the rescue. Its development made it possible to look beyond the ZOA region and find out what exactly is the cause of such a strong gravitational attraction. True, what the scientists saw put them even more in a dead end. It turned out that beyond the ZOA region there is an ordinary cluster of galaxies. The size of this cluster did not correlate with the force exerted on our galaxy by gravitational attraction. But as soon as scientists decided to look deeper into space, they soon discovered that our galaxy is being pulled towards an even larger object. It turned out to be the Shapley Supercluster, the most massive supercluster of galaxies in the observable Universe.
The supercluster consists of over 8,000 galaxies. Its mass is about 10,000 more than the mass of the Milky Way.
Great Wall CfA2
Like most of the items on this list, Great Wall(also known as the CfA2 Great Wall) once also boasted the title of the largest known space object in the universe. It was discovered by American astrophysicist Margaret Joan Geller and John Peter Hunra while studying the redshift effect for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. According to scientists, it is 500 million light-years long, 300 million light-years wide, and 15 million light-years thick.
The exact dimensions of the Great Wall are still a mystery to scientists. It could be much larger than thought, and span 750 million light-years. The problem in determining the exact dimensions lies in the location of this gigantic structure. As with the Shapley Supercluster, the Great Wall is partially covered by the "zone of avoidance".
In general, this “zone of avoidance” does not allow us to see about 20 percent of the observable (reachable for current telescopes) Universe. It lies inside the Milky Way and is dense clumps of gas and dust (as well as a high concentration of stars) that greatly distort observations. In order to look through the "zone of avoidance", astronomers have to use, for example, infrared telescopes, which can penetrate another 10 percent of the "zone of avoidance". Through which infrared waves cannot penetrate, radio waves, as well as waves of the near infrared spectrum and X-rays. Nevertheless, the actual inability to view such a large region of space somewhat upsets scientists. The "Zone of Avoidance" may contain information that can fill gaps in our knowledge of space.
Supercluster Laniakea
Galaxies are usually grouped together. These groups are called clusters. The regions of space where these clusters are more closely spaced are called superclusters. Previously, astronomers mapped these objects by determining their physical location in the universe, but recently a new way of mapping local space has been invented. This made it possible to shed light on information that was previously inaccessible.
The new principle of mapping the local space and the galaxies located in it is based not on the calculation of the location of objects, but on observations of the indicators of the gravitational influence exerted by objects. Thanks to the new method, the location of galaxies is determined and, on the basis of this, a map of the distribution of gravity in the Universe is compiled. Compared to the old new method is more advanced because it allows astronomers not only to mark new objects in the universe we see, but also to find new objects in places where it was not possible to look before.
The first results of the study of a local cluster of galaxies using a new method made it possible to detect a new supercluster. The importance of this study lies in the fact that it will allow us to better understand where our place in the universe is. Previously, the Milky Way was thought to be inside the Virgo Supercluster, but a new method of research shows that this region is only part of the even larger Laniakea Supercluster, one of the largest objects in the universe. It stretches for 520 million light years, and somewhere inside it we are.
Great Wall of Sloan
The Sloan Great Wall was first discovered in 2003 as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a scientific mapping of hundreds of millions of galaxies to identify the largest objects in the universe. The Great Wall of Sloan is a giant galactic filament made up of several superclusters. They, like the tentacles of a giant octopus, are distributed in all directions of the universe. At 1.4 billion light-years long, the "wall" was once thought to be the largest object in the universe.
The Great Wall of Sloan itself is not as well understood as the superclusters that lie within it. Some of these superclusters are interesting in their own right and deserve special mention. One, for example, has a core of galaxies that together look like giant tendrils from the side. Inside another supercluster, there is a high gravitational interaction between galaxies - many of them are now undergoing a period of merger.
The presence of the "wall" and any other larger objects creates new questions about the mysteries of the universe. Their existence is contrary to the cosmological principle, which theoretically limits how large objects in the universe can be. According to this principle, the laws of the universe do not allow the existence of objects larger than 1.2 billion light years. However, objects like the Great Wall of Sloan completely contradict this opinion.
Group of quasars Huge-LQG7
Quasars are high-energy astronomical objects located at the center of galaxies. It is believed that the center of quasars are supermassive black holes, which attract the surrounding matter. This results in a huge burst of radiation, the power of which is 1000 times greater than the energy generated by all the stars within the galaxy. Currently, the Huge-LQG group of quasars, consisting of 73 quasars scattered over 4 billion light-years, is in third place among the largest structural objects in the Universe. Scientists believe that such a massive group of quasars, as well as similar ones, are one of the reasons for the appearance of the largest structural ones in the Universe, such as, for example, Sloan's Great Wall.
The Huge-LQG group of quasars was discovered after analyzing the same data that discovered the Great Wall of Sloan. Scientists determined its presence after mapping one of the regions of space using a special algorithm that measures the density of quasars in a certain area.
It should be noted that the very existence of Huge-LQG is still a matter of controversy. Some scientists believe that this region of space really represents a single group of quasars, other scientists are sure that quasars within this region of space are located randomly and are not part of one group.
Giant gamma ring
Stretching for 5 billion light-years, the Giant galactic gamma-ray ring (Giant GRB Ring) is the second largest object in the universe. In addition to its incredible size, this object attracts attention due to its unusual shape. Astronomers studying bursts of gamma rays (huge bursts of energy that are formed as a result of the death of massive stars) discovered a series of nine bursts, the sources of which were at the same distance from the Earth. These bursts formed a ring in the sky, 70 times the diameter of the full moon. Considering that gamma-ray bursts themselves are quite rare, the chance that they will form a similar shape in the sky is 1 in 20,000. This led scientists to assume that they are witnessing one of the largest structural objects in the universe. .
By itself, "ring" is just a term to describe the visual representation of this phenomenon as seen from Earth. According to one of the assumptions, the giant gamma ring may be a projection of a certain sphere, around which all gamma radiation emissions occurred in a relatively short period of time, about 250 million years. True, here the question arises as to what kind of source could create such a sphere. One explanation is related to the assumption that galaxies can cluster around a huge concentration of dark matter. However, this is just a theory. Scientists still don't know how these structures form.
Great Wall of Hercules - North Corona
The largest structural object in the universe was also discovered by astronomers as part of their observation of gamma rays. This object, dubbed the Great Wall of Hercules - the Northern Corona, spans 10 billion light-years, making it twice the size of the Giant Galactic Gamma Ring. Since the brightest bursts of gamma rays are produced by larger stars, usually located in areas of space where there is more matter, astronomers each time metaphorically consider each such burst as a needle prick into something larger. When scientists discovered that there were too many gamma ray bursts in the region of space towards the constellations Hercules and the Northern Corona, they determined that there was an astronomical object here, most likely a dense concentration of galaxy clusters and other matter.
Interesting fact: the name "Great Wall Hercules - Northern Crown" was coined by a Filipino teenager who wrote it down on Wikipedia (make edits to this electronic encyclopedia, who does not know, anyone can). Shortly after the news that astronomers had discovered a huge structure in the cosmic sky, a corresponding article appeared on the pages of Wikipedia. Despite the fact that the invented name does not quite accurately describe this object (the wall covers several constellations at once, and not just two), the world Internet quickly got used to it. Perhaps this is the first time that Wikipedia has given a name to a discovered and interesting scientific point vision of the object.
Since the very existence of this "wall" also contradicts the cosmological principle, scientists have to reconsider some of their theories about how the universe actually formed.
space web
Scientists believe that the expansion of the universe is not random. There are theories according to which all the galaxies of space are organized into one structure of incredible size, resembling filamentous connections that unite dense regions. These threads are scattered between less dense voids. Scientists call this structure the Cosmic Web.
According to scientists, the web formed on a very early stages history of the universe. At first, the formation of the web was unstable and heterogeneous, which subsequently helped the formation of everything that is now in the Universe. It is believed that the "threads" of this web played a big role in the evolution of the universe - they accelerated it. It is noted that the galaxies that are inside these filaments have a significantly higher rate of star formation. In addition, these threads are a kind of bridge for gravitational interaction between galaxies. Once formed within these filaments, galaxies travel to galaxy clusters where they eventually die.
Only recently have scientists begun to understand what this Cosmic Web really is. Studying one of the distant quasars, the researchers noted that their radiation affects one of the threads of the Cosmic Web. The light of the quasar went straight to one of the filaments, which heated up the gases in it and made them glow. Based on these observations, scientists were able to imagine the distribution of threads between other galaxies, thereby compiling a picture of the "skeleton of the cosmos."
