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Mar 20, 2024

In a Major Astronomical Feat, 1.3 Million Quasars Illuminate the Universe’s Past

Posted by in category: cosmology

The new map includes around 1.3 million quasars from across the visible universe and could help scientists better understand the properties of dark matter.

Astronomers have charted the largest-ever volume of the universe with a new map of active supermassive black holes living at the centers of galaxies. Called quasars, the gas-gobbling black holes are, ironically, some of the universe’s brightest objects.

The new map logs the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, the furthest of which shone bright when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old. (For comparison, the universe is now 13.7 billion years old.)

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