Scientists peering into the early universe are baffled to see lonely quasars drifting away in the void. Quasars are one of the brightest objects in the universe. It sits at the core of a galaxy and hosts an active supermassive black hole at its centre. Black holes pull in surrounding gas and dust and blast out an enormous amount of energy. This creates extreme brightness around them
Quasars are known to be surrounded by several smaller galaxies. They came into being as few as a hundred million years after the Big Bang, something that has surprised astronomers. The earliest quasars are believed to have been produced from dense regions of primordial matter.
Quasars are expected to sit in crowded fields with several galaxies around them, but a new MIT-led study says that astronomers have observed some ancient quasars that are drifting away alone in the early universe.
The findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the team looked as far back as 13 billion years into the universe and studied the cosmic surroundings of five known ancient quasars.
They found a variety of quasars, with some residing in extremely packed fields with over 50 galaxies around them, with five of them all alone with only a few galaxies nearby.
How can lonely quasars exist?
Scientists are surprised to see such lonely quasars and are struggling to understand how were they born so early on in the universe in the absence of a significant source of surrounding matter to fuel the growth of their black hole.
"Contrary to previous belief, we find on average, these quasars are not necessarily in those highest-density regions of the early universe. Some of them seem to be sitting in the middle of nowhere," says Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT.
"It's difficult to explain how these quasars could have grown so big if they appear to have nothing to feed from."
The team believes these quasars might not be as alone as it appears. They suggest that the bright objects might be surrounded by galaxies that are heavily shrouded in dust and are therefore not visible.
The researchers are not working to fine-tune their observations and see through the cosmic dust and learn how the quasars grew so big, so fast, in the early universe.
The five quasars are more than 13 billion years old and the oldest to be ever observed. They likely formed between 600 to 700 million years after the Big Bang. The supermassive black holes are a billion times more massive than the sun.
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