See more details here.New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory may provide clues to how quasars 'turn on.' Since the discovery of quasars over 40 years ago, astronomers have been trying to understand the conditions surrounding the birth of these immensely powerful objects.
Hot, X-ray producing regions around two distant quasars observed by Chandra are thought to have formed during their activation. These features are located tens of thousands of light years from the central supermassive black holes thought to power the quasars.
'The X-ray features are likely shock waves that could be a direct result of the turning on of the quasar about 4 billion years ago,' said Alan Stockton of the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and lead author of a report on this work published recently in The Astrophysical Journal.
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