Astronomers discovered 63 quasars, almost doubling the number of known quasars from the ancient universe.
Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe, so bright that they eclipse the light of their host galaxies. In spite of this brightness, they are cloaked in mystery because they are not easy to find. Quasars are located in distant galaxies.
The nearest galaxy hosting one, Mrk 231—a starburst galaxy powered by two black holes and with a star-formation rate 100 times greater than that of our Milky Way—is 581 million light-years away.
Astronomers still have limited knowledge about Quasars even after 53 years since its discovery. What they are certain of is that these celestial objects emit a massive amount of light and radiation, and they are found near supermassive black holes.
The discovery elicits excitement in the scientific community as these quasars came from a time when the universe is just a billion years old. Astronomers also hope that studying the quasars will help them discover more about the Dark Age of the universe, the era after the Big Bang and before the birth of the first star.
"Quasars are among the brightest objects and they literally illuminate our knowledge of the early universe," said Eduardo Bañados, a research fellow at the Carnegie Institution. "The 63 discovered in this study are the best tools for helping us probe the early universe. But until now, conclusive results have been limited by the very small sample size of ancient quasars," Bañados added.
The studies on quasars conducted by Bañados and his colleagues will be published in the next edition of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.
"Astronomers are still trying to fill in the blank pages of the photo album of the infant universe," astrophysicist Abraham Loeb said. The discovery of ancient Quasars is instrumental in completing that album.
