Largest map of active black holes released; understand

It was published this Monday (18), in The Astrophysical Journal, the largest map of supermassive black holes already done. The study identified around 1.3 million active quasars in space .

Researchers used images from the Gaia telescopes, Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to better understand dark matter and the expansion of the universe.

What is a quasar?

The term comes from “quasi-stellar radio source” (in Portuguese, “quasi-stellar radio source”) and defines an active luminous nucleus larger than a star, but smaller than the minimum size to be considered a galaxy. Quasars are supermassive black holes and considered one of the brightest objects in the universe.

Weighing millions to billions of times more than the Sun, they feed on matter heading towards them. They release an enormous flow of radiation and their winds shape the galaxy where they live.

In this research, the oldest quasar found is from when the universe was 1.5 billion years old. Currently, he has 13.7 billion.

Image combination

The Gaia telescope is used to detect stars in the Milky Way, but ends up portraying images of objects outside our galaxy. The researchers used this factor to identify black holes among 6.6 million candidates.

“We were able to make measurements of how matter came together in the early universe that are as precise as some of those obtained in important international research projects. Which is quite remarkable, considering that we obtained our data as a 'bonus' from the Gaia project, focused on the Milky Way,” comments Kate Storey-Fisher, author of the article, researcher and post-doctoral candidate at the Donostia International Physics Center, in Spain.

Together with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Sloan Digital Sky Survey, it was possible to better understand dark matter and how it clusters. Scientists are also looking to this data for more information about the expansion of the universe.

Storey-Fisher says, “Researchers around the world are using the quasar map to measure everything from the initial density fluctuations that gave rise to the cosmic web to the distribution of cosmic voids and the movement of our solar system through the universe.”