Astronomers have identified two galaxies that have been merging for 12.8 billion years and noticed indications that they will form one of the brightest objects in the universe: a quasar .
These bodies, described as monstrous by researchers, generate a gravitational interaction that attracts matter to the black hole at the center of one of the galaxies — or both — generating extremely luminous activity.
Quasars (short for quasi-stellar objects) shine because they attract large amounts of gas and dust to their galaxy’s black hole. When captured, they form an accretion disk — a structure formed in orbit around a body.
This matter enters into high-speed motion, generating great heating — emitting enormous amounts of electromagnetic radiation, which can be seen billions of light years away, including by telescopes on the Earth’s surface.
To confirm whether what they were observing was really a quasar, the team of researchers used information from the Alma (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) radio telescope, located in Chile, to study an already known body and compare it with the galaxies investigated in the study.
With the data obtained, they were also able to measure the amount of gas present, which is the material for the formation of new stars. Because there is a large amount of it, the measurement identified that the merger will also trigger a sudden rapid increase — known as an explosion — in star formation.
The study of quasars like this one published in The Astrophysical Journal helps to understand the early evolution of galaxies and black holes in the early Universe.
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This content was originally published in Galaxy merger forms brightest monstrous object in the Universe; understand on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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