Most cosmic events happen on huge timescales. Not so for quasars – the bright centres of galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes gobbling down gas and dust. We have just seen them ignite in a matter of years.
Astronomers expect quasars to use up their fuel and settle down into quiet galaxies – a process that should take hundreds of thousands of years. So last year, when a dozen quasars were spotted shutting down in just hundreds of days, it was a shock.
Chelsea MacLeod of the University of…
Ancient quasars in distant galaxies caught switching on suddenly
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