Why the discovery of a bevy of quasars will boost efforts to understand galaxies' origins
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-discovery-bevy-quasars-boost-efforts.html
Late last year, an international team including researchers from the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA)
at Peking University announced the discovery of more than 60 extremely distant quasars, nearly doubling the number known to
science - and thus providing dozens of new opportunities to look deep into our universe's history.
Now, in a roundtable discussion hosted by The Kavli Foundation, three astrophysicists, including a member of the team that
made the discovery, explain why this important finding will help unravel the secrets of our modern universe's origins, as well
as the mysterious connection between galaxies and monstrous black holes.
Quasars are the stupendously bright regions in the cores of galaxies, powered by gargantuan black holes.
"You can think of quasars as lighthouses in the dark of the early universe," said Roberto Maiolino, a professor of experimental
astrophysics at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge and director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology,
Cambridge (KICC). "Just as a lighthouse's beam might shine on nearby land forms, making them visible from far away, quasars
enable us to investigate the very distant universe and understand the physics of primordial galaxies."
Ultra-distant quasars offer a unique window into how both galaxies and supermassive black holes developed and interacted.
But they are rare, so finding them requires extensive observing surveys using powerful, large telescopes that take images
across a large part of the sky.
