From a region of space-time just 900 million years after the universe’s birth, a pair of objects has achieved an almost unbelievable state.
According to SciTech Daily, an international research team led by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU – Japan) discovered a terrifying pair of “trans-dimensional” objects from the early universe using two Subaru and Gemini North telescopes located in Hawaii (USA).
These are two quasars, which are black holes “disguised” as bright star-like objects in the sky. The light emitted is a result of their voracious consumption of matter.
More importantly, these objects originate from a period known as the “Cosmic Dawn” – approximately 1 billion years after the Big Bang event that occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
Graphic depicting the “monster” pair of objects merging – (Image: GEMINI OBSERVATORY/NOIRLab).
In the “trans-dimensional” images collected by the two telescopes, the pair of objects exists in a region of space approximately 900 million years after the Big Bang and has reached a gigantic size.
The light from them is so powerful that it traveled across billions of light-years to reach the telescopes on Earth, which naturally took billions of years and provided us with a complete view of a moment in the universe’s past.
The quasar pair in the “trans-dimensional” images captured by the telescopes – (Image: NOIRLab).
With their ancient age, the quasar pair offers insights into the reionization period of the universe, which occurred from 400 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
During that time, something—possibly a combination of several sources—released enough radiation to strip electrons from most hydrogen atoms, completely altering the nature of the universe.
Scientists suspect that this intense radiation source primarily came from the quasars.
The collision and merger of two galaxies may supply material for supermassive black holes, triggering the activity of quasars.
Therefore, at a time when intense radiation was heating the entire universe, one would expect to see many binary quasars.
However, despite humanity’s discovery of 300 quasars from this reionization era, each one has been solitary.
Thus, this recently recorded pair of objects is the first quasar pair to help validate the long-standing theory.
This quasar pair is also composed of two central black holes from two galaxies that are in the process of merging—a crucial process in the evolution of the universe.
Consequently, this discovery further illuminates the role of galaxy mergers and black hole activity during the Cosmic Dawn.
