"Astronomers have found a quartet of quasars embedded in a single cloud of cold gas, a discovery
that challenges currently held theories about how these rare objects form.
“The discovery is significant both because there are four of them, and because they are so close together,” lead researcher Joseph Hennawi, told Discovery News.
Quasars are typically solitary beasts, separated by hundreds of millions of light years. About 100 have been found in pairs. Only two sets of triplets have been discovered, and now, a single quartet.
“This was extremely surprising, as we knew that quasars are very rare objects, and it should be extremely unlikely to find four of them so close together,” Hennawi wrote
The newly found foursome are within 650,000 light years of one another, which is equivalent to about 25 percent of the distance between Milky Way and its nearest big neighbor galaxy Andromeda, he added.
“Current models of how structure forms in the universe would never predict that there would be so much cool, dense gas around. Instead, those models predict that the gas in such a massive object should be 1,000 times hotter and 1,000 times less dense,” he said.
The discovery offers a unique opportunity to glimpse the assembly of the most massive structures in the universe, added astronomer Michele Fumagalli, ..".Discovery.com
What it is a GLIMPSE of is.....Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, Job 9:8
“The discovery is significant both because there are four of them, and because they are so close together,” lead researcher Joseph Hennawi, told Discovery News.
Quasars are typically solitary beasts, separated by hundreds of millions of light years. About 100 have been found in pairs. Only two sets of triplets have been discovered, and now, a single quartet.
“This was extremely surprising, as we knew that quasars are very rare objects, and it should be extremely unlikely to find four of them so close together,” Hennawi wrote
The newly found foursome are within 650,000 light years of one another, which is equivalent to about 25 percent of the distance between Milky Way and its nearest big neighbor galaxy Andromeda, he added.
“Current models of how structure forms in the universe would never predict that there would be so much cool, dense gas around. Instead, those models predict that the gas in such a massive object should be 1,000 times hotter and 1,000 times less dense,” he said.
The discovery offers a unique opportunity to glimpse the assembly of the most massive structures in the universe, added astronomer Michele Fumagalli, ..".Discovery.com
What it is a GLIMPSE of is.....Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, Job 9:8