According to current instruments, the odds of finding a quadruple quasar are one in ten million. Given these figures, it is not surprising that astronomers are surprised and fascinated to have discovered the first of them . The team of scientists responsible for the discovery has been led by Joseph Hennawi, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (Germany).
The study, which has been published in the journal Science , explains that the presence of these four active and very close black holes forming this quadruple quasar has been found in one of the most massive structures ever seen in the distant universe. These four black holes are surrounded by an immense nebula of cold, dense gas that emits light from the radiation it receives from this quartet.
Its superb brightness is due to the fact that quasars (which were discovered in 1960) feed on matter that falls into supermassive black holes, which makes them the most luminous objects in the entire Universe. So much so that they can become hundreds of times brighter than the galaxies to which they belong, overshadowing the energy of thousands and billions of stars that these galaxies may contain.
But this evolving process, which may seem common to us in the activity of the cosmos, lasts for only a tiny fraction of the life of a galaxy. Therefore, discovering a quasar is quite complicated if not to say that it is like finding a needle in a haystack and, usually, all of them are usually hundreds of millions of light years apart from each other.
This cosmic four-leaf clover is “in a region where there are several hundred times more galaxies than you would expect to see at these distances. If you come across something that, according to the scientific view, is highly unlikely, you can only reach one of these two conclusions: either you have been very lucky, or you need to modify your theories ”, explains J. Xavier Prochaska, co-author of the study.
It is clear that astrophysicists have found, thanks to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, an intriguing new mystery behind a gigantic and populated nebula in the distant universe 10 billion light years from our planet .
