Accelerating expansion of the universe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_expansion_of_the_universe

Lambda-CDM, accelerated expansion of the universe. The timeline in this schematic diagram extends from the Big Bang/inflation era 13.7 billion years ago to the present cosmological time.

Observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time.

The accelerated expansion was discovered during 1998, by two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which both used distant type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration. The idea was that as type Ia supernovae have almost the same intrinsic brightness (a standard candle), and since objects that are further away appear dimmer, we can use the observed brightness of these supernovae to measure the distance to them. The distance can then be compared to the supernovae's cosmological redshift, which measures how much the universe has expanded since the supernova occurred. The unexpected result was that objects in the universe are moving away from one another at an accelerated rate. Cosmologists at the time expected that recession velocity would always be decelerating, due to the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe. Three members of these two groups have subsequently been awarded Nobel Prizes for their discovery. Confirmatory evidence has been found in baryon acoustic oscillations, and in analyses of the clustering of galaxies.

The accelerated expansion of the universe is thought to have begun since the universe entered its dark-energy-dominated era roughly 4 billion years ago. Within the framework of general relativity, an accelerated expansion can be accounted for by a positive value of the cosmological constant Λ, equivalent to the presence of a positive vacuum energy, dubbed "dark energy". While there are alternative possible explanations, the description assuming dark energy (positive Λ) is used in the current standard model of cosmology, which also includes cold dark matter (CDM) and is known as the Lambda-CDM model.

Background

Nature timeline
−13 — – −12 — – −11 — – −10 — – −9 — – −8 — – −7 — – −6 — – −5 — – −4 — – −3 — – −2 — – −1 — – 0 —	Dark Ages Reionization Matter-dominated era Accelerated expansion Water Single-celled life Photosynthesis Multicellular life Vertebrates	← Earliest Universe ← Earliest stars ← Earliest galaxy ← Quasar / black hole ← Omega Centauri ← Andromeda Galaxy ← Milky Way spirals ← NGC 188 star cluster ← Alpha Centauri ← Earth / Solar System ← Earliest life ← Earliest oxygen ← Atmospheric oxygen ← Sexual reproduction ← Earliest fungi ← Earliest animals / plants ← Cambrian explosion ← Earliest mammals ← Earliest apes / humans L i f e
(billion years ago)

Further information: Cosmological constant, Lambda-CDM model, Hubble's law, Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric, and Friedmann equations

In the decades since the detection of cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1965, the Big Bang model has become the most accepted model explaining the evolution of our universe. The Friedmann equation defines how the energy in the universe drives its expansion.where κ represents the curvature of the universe, a(t) is the scale factor, ρ is the total energy density of the universe, and H is the Hubble parameter.

We define a critical density

${\displaystyle \rho _{c}={\frac {3H^{2}}{8{\pi }G}}}$

and the density parameter

${\displaystyle \Omega ={\frac {\rho }{\rho _{c}}}}$

We can then rewrite the Hubble parameter as

where the four currently hypothesized contributors to the energy density of the universe are curvature, matter, radiation and dark energy. Each of the components decreases with the expansion of the universe (increasing scale factor), except perhaps the dark energy term. It is the values of these cosmological parameters which physicists use to determine the acceleration of the universe.

The acceleration equation describes the evolution of the scale factor with time

${\displaystyle {\frac {\ddot {a}}{a}}=-{\frac {4{\pi }G}{3}}\left(\rho +{\frac {3P}{c^{2}}}\right)}$

where the pressure P is defined by the cosmological model chosen. (see explanatory models below)

Physicists at one time were so assured of the deceleration of the universe's expansion that they introduced a so-called deceleration parameter q₀. Current observations indicate this deceleration parameter being negative.

Relation to inflation

According to the theory of cosmic inflation, the very early universe underwent a period of very rapid, quasi-exponential expansion. While the time-scale for this period of expansion was far shorter than that of the current expansion, this was a period of accelerated expansion with some similarities to the current epoch.

Technical definition

The definition of "accelerating expansion" is that the second time derivative of the cosmic scale factor, ${\displaystyle {\ddot {a}}}$, is positive, which is equivalent to the deceleration parameter, ${\displaystyle q}$, being negative. However, note this does not imply that the Hubble parameter is increasing with time. Since the Hubble parameter is defined as ${\displaystyle H(t)\equiv {\dot {a}}(t)/a(t)}$, it follows from the definitions that the derivative of the Hubble parameter is given by

${\displaystyle {\frac {dH}{dt}}=-H^{2}(1+q)}$

so the Hubble parameter is decreasing with time unless ${\displaystyle q<-1}$. Observations prefer ${\displaystyle q\approx -0.55}$, which implies that ${\displaystyle {\ddot {a}}}$ is positive but ${\displaystyle dH/dt}$ is negative. Essentially, this implies that the cosmic recession velocity of any one particular galaxy is increasing with time, but its velocity/distance ratio is still decreasing; thus different galaxies expanding across a sphere of fixed radius cross the sphere more slowly at later times.

It is seen from above that the case of "zero acceleration/deceleration" corresponds to ${\displaystyle a(t)}$ is a linear function of ${\displaystyle t}$, ${\displaystyle q=0}$, ${\displaystyle {\dot {a}}=const}$, and ${\displaystyle H(t)=1/t}$.

Evidence for acceleration

To learn about the rate of expansion of the universe we look at the magnitude-redshift relationship of astronomical objects using standard candles, or their distance-redshift relationship using standard rulers. We can also look at the growth of large-scale structure, and find that the observed values of the cosmological parameters are best described by models which include an accelerating expansion.

Supernova observation

Artist's impression of a Type Ia supernova, as revealed by spectro-polarimetry observations

In 1998, the first evidence for acceleration came from the observation of Type Ia supernovae, which are exploding white dwarfs that have exceeded their stability limit. Because they all have similar masses, their intrinsic luminosity is standardizable. Repeated imaging of selected areas of the sky is used to discover the supernovae, then follow-up observations give their peak brightness, which is converted into a quantity known as luminosity distance (see distance measures in cosmology for details). Spectral lines of their light can be used to determine their redshift.

For supernovae at redshift less than around 0.1, or light travel time less than 10 percent of the age of the universe, this gives a nearly linear distance–redshift relation due to Hubble's law. At larger distances, since the expansion rate of the universe has changed over time, the distance-redshift relation deviates from linearity, and this deviation depends on how the expansion rate has changed over time. The full calculation requires computer integration of the Friedmann equation, but a simple derivation can be given as follows: the redshift z directly gives the cosmic scale factor at the time the supernova exploded.

${\displaystyle a(t)={\frac {1}{1+z}}}$

So a supernova with a measured redshift z = 0.5 implies the universe was 1/1 + 0.5 = 2/3 of its present size when the supernova exploded. In the case of accelerated expansion, ${\displaystyle {\ddot {a}}}$ is positive; therefore, ${\displaystyle {\dot {a}}}$ was smaller in the past than today. Thus an accelerating universe took a longer time to expand from 2/3 to 1 times its present size, compared to a non-accelerating universe with constant ${\displaystyle {\dot {a}}}$ and the same present-day value of the Hubble constant. This results in a larger light-travel time, larger distance and fainter supernovae, which corresponds to the actual observations. Adam Riess et al. found that "the distances of the high-redshift SNe Ia were, on average, 10% to 15% farther than expected in a low mass density Ω_M = 0.2 universe without a cosmological constant". This means that the measured high-redshift distances were too large, compared to nearby ones, for a decelerating universe.

Baryon acoustic oscillations

Main article: Baryon acoustic oscillations

In the early universe before recombination and decoupling took place, photons and matter existed in a primordial plasma. Points of higher density in the photon-baryon plasma would contract, being compressed by gravity until the pressure became too large and they expanded again. This contraction and expansion created vibrations in the plasma analogous to sound waves. Since dark matter only interacts gravitationally it stayed at the centre of the sound wave, the origin of the original overdensity. When decoupling occurred, approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang, photons separated from matter and were able to stream freely through the universe, creating the cosmic microwave background as we know it. This left shells of baryonic matter at a fixed radius from the overdensities of dark matter, a distance known as the sound horizon. As time passed and the universe expanded, it was at these inhomogeneities of matter density where galaxies started to form. So by looking at the distances at which galaxies at different redshifts tend to cluster, it is possible to determine a standard angular diameter distance and use that to compare to the distances predicted by different cosmological models.

Peaks have been found in the correlation function (the probability that two galaxies will be a certain distance apart) at 100 h⁻¹ Mpc, (where h is the dimensionless Hubble constant) indicating that this is the size of the sound horizon today, and by comparing this to the sound horizon at the time of decoupling (using the CMB), we can confirm the accelerated expansion of the universe.

Clusters of galaxies

Measuring the mass functions of galaxy clusters, which describe the number density of the clusters above a threshold mass, also provides evidence for dark energy. By comparing these mass functions at high and low redshifts to those predicted by different cosmological models, values for w and Ω_m are obtained which confirm a low matter density and a non zero amount of dark energy.

Age of the universe

See also: Age of the universe

Given a cosmological model with certain values of the cosmological density parameters, it is possible to integrate the Friedmann equations and derive the age of the universe.

${\displaystyle t_{0}=\int _{0}^{1}{\frac {da}{\dot {a}}}}$

By comparing this to actual measured values of the cosmological parameters, we can confirm the validity of a model which is accelerating now, and had a slower expansion in the past.

Gravitational waves as standard sirens

Recent discoveries of gravitational waves through LIGO and VIRGO not only confirmed Einstein's predictions but also opened a new window into the universe. These gravitational waves can work as sort of standard sirens to measure the expansion rate of the universe. Abbot et al. 2017 measured the Hubble constant value to be approximately 70 kilometres per second per megaparsec. The amplitudes of the strain 'h' is dependent on the masses of the objects causing waves, distances from observation point and gravitational waves detection frequencies. The associated distance measures are dependent on the cosmological parameters like the Hubble Constant for nearby objects and will be dependent on other cosmological parameters like the dark energy density, matter density, etc. for distant sources.

Explanatory models

The expansion of the Universe accelerating. Time flows from bottom to top

Dark energy

Main article: Dark energy

The most important property of dark energy is that it has negative pressure (repulsive action) which is distributed relatively homogeneously in space.

${\displaystyle P=wc^{2}\rho }$

where c is the speed of light and ρ is the energy density. Different theories of dark energy suggest different values of w, with w < −1/3 for cosmic acceleration (this leads to a positive value of ä in the acceleration equation above).

The simplest explanation for dark energy is that it is a cosmological constant or vacuum energy; in this case w = −1. This leads to the Lambda-CDM model, which has generally been known as the Standard Model of Cosmology from 2003 through the present, since it is the simplest model in good agreement with a variety of recent observations. Riess et al. found that their results from supernova observations favoured expanding models with positive cosmological constant (Ω_λ > 0) and a current accelerated expansion (q₀ < 0).

Phantom energy

Main article: Phantom energy

Current observations allow the possibility of a cosmological model containing a dark energy component with equation of state w < −1. This phantom energy density would become infinite in finite time, causing such a huge gravitational repulsion that the universe would lose all structure and end in a Big Rip. For example, for w = −3/2 and H₀ =70 km·s⁻¹·Mpc⁻¹, the time remaining before the universe ends in this Big Rip is 22 billion years.

Alternative theories

See also: Dark energy § Theories of dark energy

There are many alternative explanations for the accelerating universe. Some examples are quintessence, a proposed form of dark energy with a non-constant state equation, whose density decreases with time. A negative mass cosmology does not assume that the mass density of the universe is positive (as is done in supernova observations), and instead finds a negative cosmological constant. Occam's razor also suggests that this is the 'more parsimonious hypothesis'. Dark fluid is an alternative explanation for accelerating expansion which attempts to unite dark matter and dark energy into a single framework. Alternatively, some authors have argued that the accelerated expansion of the universe could be due to a repulsive gravitational interaction of antimatter or a deviation of the gravitational laws from general relativity, such as massive gravity, meaning that gravitons themselves have mass. The measurement of the speed of gravity with the gravitational wave event GW170817 ruled out many modified gravity theories as alternative explanation to dark energy.

Another type of model, the backreaction conjecture, was proposed by cosmologist Syksy Räsänen: the rate of expansion is not homogenous, but we are in a region where expansion is faster than the background. Inhomogeneities in the early universe cause the formation of walls and bubbles, where the inside of a bubble has less matter than on average. According to general relativity, space is less curved than on the walls, and thus appears to have more volume and a higher expansion rate. In the denser regions, the expansion is slowed by a higher gravitational attraction. Therefore, the inward collapse of the denser regions looks the same as an accelerating expansion of the bubbles, leading us to conclude that the universe is undergoing an accelerated expansion. The benefit is that it does not require any new physics such as dark energy. Räsänen does not consider the model likely, but without any falsification, it must remain a possibility. It would require rather large density fluctuations (20%) to work.

A final possibility is that dark energy is an illusion caused by some bias in measurements. For example, if we are located in an emptier-than-average region of space, the observed cosmic expansion rate could be mistaken for a variation in time, or acceleration. A different approach uses a cosmological extension of the equivalence principle to show how space might appear to be expanding more rapidly in the voids surrounding our local cluster. While weak, such effects considered cumulatively over billions of years could become significant, creating the illusion of cosmic acceleration, and making it appear as if we live in a Hubble bubble. Yet other possibilities are that the accelerated expansion of the universe is an illusion caused by the relative motion of us to the rest of the universe, or that the supernova sample size used wasn't large enough.

Theories for the consequences to the universe

As the universe expands, the density of radiation and ordinary dark matter declines more quickly than the density of dark energy (see equation of state) and, eventually, dark energy dominates. Specifically, when the scale of the universe doubles, the density of matter is reduced by a factor of 8, but the density of dark energy is nearly unchanged (it is exactly constant if the dark energy is the cosmological constant).

In models where dark energy is the cosmological constant, the universe will expand exponentially with time in the far future, coming closer and closer to a de Sitter universe. This will eventually lead to all evidence for the Big Bang disappearing, as the cosmic microwave background is redshifted to lower intensities and longer wavelengths. Eventually, its frequency will be low enough that it will be absorbed by the interstellar medium, and so be screened from any observer within the galaxy. This will occur when the universe is less than 50 times its current age, leading to the end of cosmology as we know it as the distant universe turns dark.

A constantly expanding universe with a non-zero cosmological constant has mass density decreasing over time. In such a scenario, the current understanding is that all matter will ionize and disintegrate into isolated stable particles such as electrons and neutrinos, with all complex structures dissipating away. This scenario is known as "heat death of the universe".

Alternatives for the ultimate fate of the universe include the Big Rip mentioned above, a Big Bounce, Big Freeze or Big Crunch.

Quasar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasar 

Artist's rendering of the accretion disk in ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun

A quasar (/ˈkweɪzɑːr/; also known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO) is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN), powered by a supermassive black hole, with mass ranging from millions to tens of billions times the mass of the Sun, surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk. Gas in the disk falling towards the black hole heats up because of friction and releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. The radiant energy of quasars is enormous; the most powerful quasars have luminosities thousands of times greater than a galaxy such as the Milky Way. Usually, quasars are categorized as a subclass of the more general category of AGN. The redshifts of quasars are of cosmological origin.

The term quasar originated as a contraction of "quasi-stellar [star-like] radio source" – because quasars were first identified during the 1950s as sources of radio-wave emission of unknown physical origin – and when identified in photographic images at visible wavelengths, they resembled faint, star-like points of light. High-resolution images of quasars, particularly from the Hubble Space Telescope, have demonstrated that quasars occur in the centers of galaxies, and that some host galaxies are strongly interacting or merging galaxies. As with other categories of AGN, the observed properties of a quasar depend on many factors, including the mass of the black hole, the rate of gas accretion, the orientation of the accretion disk relative to the observer, the presence or absence of a jet, and the degree of obscuration by gas and dust within the host galaxy.

More than a million quasars have been found, with the nearest known being about 600 million light-years away from Earth. The record for the most distant known quasar keeps changing. In 2017, the quasar ULAS J1342+0928 was detected at redshift z = 7.54. Light observed from this 800 million solar mass quasar was emitted when the universe was only 690 million years old. In 2020, the quasar Pōniuāʻena was detected from a time only 700 million years after the Big Bang, and with an estimated mass of 1.5 billion times the mass of our Sun. In early 2021, the quasar J0313-1806, with a 1.6 billion solar-mass black hole, was reported at z = 7.64, 670 million years after the Big Bang. In March 2021, PSO J172.3556+18.7734 was detected and has since been called the most distant known radio-loud quasar discovered.

Quasar discovery surveys have demonstrated that quasar activity was more common in the distant past; the peak epoch was approximately 10 billion years ago. Concentrations of multiple, gravitationally-attracted quasars are known as large quasar groups and constitute some of the largest known structures in the universe.

Naming

The term "quasar" was first used in an article by astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu in May 1964, in Physics Today, to describe certain astronomically-puzzling objects:

So far, the clumsily long name "quasi-stellar radio sources" is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form "quasar" will be used throughout this paper.

History of observation and interpretation

Sloan Digital Sky Survey image of quasar 3C 273, illustrating the object's star-like appearance. The quasar's jet can be seen extending downward and to the right from the quasar.

 

Hubble images of quasar 3C 273. At right, a coronagraph is used to block the quasar's light, making it easier to detect the surrounding host galaxy.

Background

Main article: Galaxy § Distinction from other nebulae

Between 1917 and 1922, it became clear from work by Heber Curtis, Ernst Öpik and others, that some objects ("nebulae") seen by astronomers were in fact distant galaxies like our own. But when radio astronomy began in the 1950s, astronomers detected, among the galaxies, a small number of anomalous objects with properties that defied explanation.

The objects emitted large amounts of radiation of many frequencies, but no source could be located optically, or in some cases only a faint and point-like object somewhat like a distant star. The spectral lines of these objects, which identify the chemical elements of which the object is composed, were also extremely strange and defied explanation. Some of them changed their luminosity very rapidly in the optical range and even more rapidly in the X-ray range, suggesting an upper limit on their size, perhaps no larger than our own Solar System. This implies an extremely high power density. Considerable discussion took place over what these objects might be. They were described as "quasi-stellar [meaning: star-like] radio sources", or "quasi-stellar objects" (QSOs), a name which reflected their unknown nature, and this became shortened to "quasar".

Early observations (1960s and earlier)

The first quasars (3C 48 and 3C 273) were discovered in the late 1950s, as radio sources in all-sky radio surveys. They were first noted as radio sources with no corresponding visible object. Using small telescopes and the Lovell Telescope as an interferometer, they were shown to have a very small angular size. By 1960, hundreds of these objects had been recorded and published in the Third Cambridge Catalogue while astronomers scanned the skies for their optical counterparts. In 1963, a definite identification of the radio source 3C 48 with an optical object was published by Allan Sandage and Thomas A. Matthews. Astronomers had detected what appeared to be a faint blue star at the location of the radio source and obtained its spectrum, which contained many unknown broad emission lines. The anomalous spectrum defied interpretation.

British-Australian astronomer John Bolton made many early observations of quasars, including a breakthrough in 1962. Another radio source, 3C 273, was predicted to undergo five occultations by the Moon. Measurements taken by Cyril Hazard and John Bolton during one of the occultations using the Parkes Radio Telescope allowed Maarten Schmidt to find a visible counterpart to the radio source and obtain an optical spectrum using the 200-inch (5.1 m) Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar. This spectrum revealed the same strange emission lines. Schmidt was able to demonstrate that these were likely to be the ordinary spectral lines of hydrogen redshifted by 15.8%, at the time, a high redshift (with only a handful of much fainter galaxies known with higher redshift). If this was due to the physical motion of the "star", then 3C 273 was receding at an enormous velocity, around 47000 km/s, far beyond the speed of any known star and defying any obvious explanation. Nor would an extreme velocity help to explain 3C 273's huge radio emissions. If the redshift was cosmological (now known to be correct), the large distance implied that 3C 273 was far more luminous than any galaxy, but much more compact. Also, 3C 273 was bright enough to detect on archival photographs dating back to the 1900s; it was found to be variable on yearly timescales, implying that a substantial fraction of the light was emitted from a region less than 1 light-year in size, tiny compared to a galaxy.

Although it raised many questions, Schmidt's discovery quickly revolutionized quasar observation. The strange spectrum of 3C 48 was quickly identified by Schmidt, Greenstein and Oke as hydrogen and magnesium redshifted by 37%. Shortly afterwards, two more quasar spectra in 1964 and five more in 1965 were also confirmed as ordinary light that had been redshifted to an extreme degree. While the observations and redshifts themselves were not doubted, their correct interpretation was heavily debated, and Bolton's suggestion that the radiation detected from quasars were ordinary spectral lines from distant highly redshifted sources with extreme velocity was not widely accepted at the time.

Development of physical understanding (1960s)

Main articles: Redshift, Metric expansion of space, and Universe

An extreme redshift could imply great distance and velocity but could also be due to extreme mass or perhaps some other unknown laws of nature. Extreme velocity and distance would also imply immense power output, which lacked explanation. The small sizes were confirmed by interferometry and by observing the speed with which the quasar as a whole varied in output, and by their inability to be seen in even the most powerful visible-light telescopes as anything more than faint starlike points of light. But if they were small and far away in space, their power output would have to be immense and difficult to explain. Equally, if they were very small and much closer to our galaxy, it would be easy to explain their apparent power output, but less easy to explain their redshifts and lack of detectable movement against the background of the universe.

Schmidt noted that redshift is also associated with the expansion of the universe, as codified in Hubble's law. If the measured redshift was due to expansion, then this would support an interpretation of very distant objects with extraordinarily high luminosity and power output, far beyond any object seen to date. This extreme luminosity would also explain the large radio signal. Schmidt concluded that 3C 273 could either be an individual star around 10 km wide within (or near to) our galaxy, or a distant active galactic nucleus. He stated that a distant and extremely powerful object seemed more likely to be correct.

Schmidt's explanation for the high redshift was not widely accepted at the time. A major concern was the enormous amount of energy these objects would have to be radiating, if they were distant. In the 1960s no commonly accepted mechanism could account for this. The currently accepted explanation, that it is due to matter in an accretion disc falling into a supermassive black hole, was only suggested in 1964 by Edwin Salpeter and Yakov Zel'dovich, and even then it was rejected by many astronomers, because in the 1960s, the existence of black holes was still widely seen as theoretical and too exotic, and because it was not yet confirmed that many galaxies (including our own) have supermassive black holes at their center. The strange spectral lines in their radiation, and the speed of change seen in some quasars, also suggested to many astronomers and cosmologists that the objects were comparatively small and therefore perhaps bright, massive and not far away; accordingly that their redshifts were not due to distance or velocity, and must be due to some other reason or an unknown process, meaning that the quasars were not really powerful objects nor at extreme distances, as their redshifted light implied. A common alternative explanation was that the redshifts were caused by extreme mass (gravitational redshifting explained by general relativity) and not by extreme velocity (explained by special relativity).

Various explanations were proposed during the 1960s and 1970s, each with their own problems. It was suggested that quasars were nearby objects, and that their redshift was not due to the expansion of space (special relativity) but rather to light escaping a deep gravitational well (general relativity). This would require a massive object, which would also explain the high luminosities. However, a star of sufficient mass to produce the measured redshift would be unstable and in excess of the Hayashi limit. Quasars also show forbidden spectral emission lines, previously only seen in hot gaseous nebulae of low density, which would be too diffuse to both generate the observed power and fit within a deep gravitational well. There were also serious concerns regarding the idea of cosmologically distant quasars. One strong argument against them was that they implied energies that were far in excess of known energy conversion processes, including nuclear fusion. There were suggestions that quasars were made of some hitherto unknown stable form of antimatter in similarly unknown types of region of space, and that this might account for their brightness. Others speculated that quasars were a white hole end of a wormhole, or a chain reaction of numerous supernovae.

Eventually, starting from about the 1970s, many lines of evidence (including the first X-ray space observatories, knowledge of black holes and modern models of cosmology) gradually demonstrated that the quasar redshifts are genuine and due to the expansion of space, that quasars are in fact as powerful and as distant as Schmidt and some other astronomers had suggested, and that their energy source is matter from an accretion disc falling onto a supermassive black hole. This included crucial evidence from optical and X-ray viewing of quasar host galaxies, finding of "intervening" absorption lines, which explained various spectral anomalies, observations from gravitational lensing, Peterson and Gunn's 1971 finding that galaxies containing quasars showed the same redshift as the quasars, and Kristian's 1973 finding that the "fuzzy" surrounding of many quasars was consistent with a less luminous host galaxy.

This model also fits well with other observations suggesting that many or even most galaxies have a massive central black hole. It would also explain why quasars are more common in the early universe: as a quasar draws matter from its accretion disc, there comes a point when there is less matter nearby, and energy production falls off or ceases, as the quasar becomes a more ordinary type of galaxy.

The accretion-disc energy-production mechanism was finally modeled in the 1970s, and black holes were also directly detected (including evidence showing that supermassive black holes could be found at the centers of our own and many other galaxies), which resolved the concern that quasars were too luminous to be a result of very distant objects or that a suitable mechanism could not be confirmed to exist in nature. By 1987 it was "well accepted" that this was the correct explanation for quasars, and the cosmological distance and energy output of quasars was accepted by almost all researchers.

Modern observations (1970s onward)

A cosmic mirage known as the Einstein Cross. Four apparent images are actually from the same quasar.

 

Cloud of gas around the distant quasar SDSS J102009.99+104002.7, taken by MUSE

Later it was found that not all quasars have strong radio emission; in fact only about 10% are "radio-loud". Hence the name "QSO" (quasi-stellar object) is used (in addition to "quasar") to refer to these objects, further categorised into the "radio-loud" and the "radio-quiet" classes. The discovery of the quasar had large implications for the field of astronomy in the 1960s, including drawing physics and astronomy closer together.

In 1979 the gravitational lens effect predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity was confirmed observationally for the first time with images of the double quasar 0957+561.

A study published in February, 2021, showed that there are more quasars in one direction (towards Hydra) than in the opposite direction, seemingly indicating that we are moving in that direction. But the direction of this dipole is about 28° away from the direction of our motion relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation.

In March, 2021, a collaboration of scientists, related to the Event Horizon Telescope, presented, for the first time, a polarized-based image of a black hole, particularly the black hole at the center of Messier 87, an elliptical galaxy approximately 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, revealing the forces giving rise to quasars.

Current understanding

It is now known that quasars are distant but extremely luminous objects, so any light that reaches the Earth is redshifted due to the metric expansion of space.

Quasars inhabit the centers of active galaxies and are among the most luminous, powerful, and energetic objects known in the universe, emitting up to a thousand times the energy output of the Milky Way, which contains 200–400 billion stars. This radiation is emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, almost uniformly, from X-rays to the far infrared with a peak in the ultraviolet optical bands, with some quasars also being strong sources of radio emission and of gamma-rays. With high-resolution imaging from ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, the "host galaxies" surrounding the quasars have been detected in some cases. These galaxies are normally too dim to be seen against the glare of the quasar, except with special techniques. Most quasars, with the exception of 3C 273, whose average apparent magnitude is 12.9, cannot be seen with small telescopes.

Quasars are believed—and in many cases confirmed—to be powered by accretion of material into supermassive black holes in the nuclei of distant galaxies, as suggested in 1964 by Edwin Salpeter and Yakov Zel'dovich. Light and other radiation cannot escape from within the event horizon of a black hole. The energy produced by a quasar is generated outside the black hole, by gravitational stresses and immense friction within the material nearest to the black hole, as it orbits and falls inward. The huge luminosity of quasars results from the accretion discs of central supermassive black holes, which can convert between 6% and 32% of the mass of an object into energy, compared to just 0.7% for the p–p chain nuclear fusion process that dominates the energy production in Sun-like stars. Central masses of 10⁵ to 10⁹ solar masses have been measured in quasars by using reverberation mapping. Several dozen nearby large galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, that do not have an active center and do not show any activity similar to a quasar, are confirmed to contain a similar supermassive black hole in their nuclei (galactic center). Thus it is now thought that all large galaxies have a black hole of this kind, but only a small fraction have sufficient matter in the right kind of orbit at their center to become active and power radiation in such a way as to be seen as quasars.

This also explains why quasars were more common in the early universe, as this energy production ends when the supermassive black hole consumes all of the gas and dust near it. This means that it is possible that most galaxies, including the Milky Way, have gone through an active stage, appearing as a quasar or some other class of active galaxy that depended on the black-hole mass and the accretion rate, and are now quiescent because they lack a supply of matter to feed into their central black holes to generate radiation.

Quasars in interacting galaxies

The matter accreting onto the black hole is unlikely to fall directly in, but will have some angular momentum around the black hole, which will cause the matter to collect into an accretion disc. Quasars may also be ignited or re-ignited when normal galaxies merge and the black hole is infused with a fresh source of matter. In fact, it has been suggested that a quasar could form when the Andromeda Galaxy collides with our own Milky Way galaxy in approximately 3–5 billion years.

In the 1980s, unified models were developed in which quasars were classified as a particular kind of active galaxy, and a consensus emerged that in many cases it is simply the viewing angle that distinguishes them from other active galaxies, such as blazars and radio galaxies.

The highest-redshift quasar known (as of December 2017) was ULAS J1342+0928, with a redshift of 7.54, which corresponds to a comoving distance of approximately 29.36 billion light-years from Earth (these distances are much larger than the distance light could travel in the universe's 13.8 billion year history because space itself has also been expanding).

Properties

Bright halos around 18 distant quasars

 

The Chandra X-ray image is of the quasar PKS 1127-145, a highly luminous source of X-rays and visible light about 10 billion light-years from Earth. An enormous X-ray jet extends at least a million light-years from the quasar. Image is 60 arcseconds on a side. RA 11h 30m 7.10s Dec −14° 49' 27" in Crater. Observation date: May 28, 2000. Instrument: ACIS.

More than 750000 quasars have been found (as of August 2020), most from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. All observed quasar spectra have redshifts between 0.056 and 7.64 (as of 2021). Applying Hubble's law to these redshifts, it can be shown that they are between 600 million and 29.36 billion light-years away (in terms of comoving distance). Because of the great distances to the farthest quasars and the finite velocity of light, they and their surrounding space appear as they existed in the very early universe.

The power of quasars originates from supermassive black holes that are believed to exist at the core of most galaxies. The Doppler shifts of stars near the cores of galaxies indicate that they are revolving around tremendous masses with very steep gravity gradients, suggesting black holes.

Although quasars appear faint when viewed from Earth, they are visible from extreme distances, being the most luminous objects in the known universe. The brightest quasar in the sky is 3C 273 in the constellation of Virgo. It has an average apparent magnitude of 12.8 (bright enough to be seen through a medium-size amateur telescope), but it has an absolute magnitude of −26.7. From a distance of about 33 light-years, this object would shine in the sky about as brightly as our Sun. This quasar's luminosity is, therefore, about 4 trillion (4×10¹²) times that of the Sun, or about 100 times that of the total light of giant galaxies like the Milky Way. This assumes that the quasar is radiating energy in all directions, but the active galactic nucleus is believed to be radiating preferentially in the direction of its jet. In a universe containing hundreds of billions of galaxies, most of which had active nuclei billions of years ago but only seen today, it is statistically certain that thousands of energy jets should be pointed toward the Earth, some more directly than others. In many cases it is likely that the brighter the quasar, the more directly its jet is aimed at the Earth. Such quasars are called blazars.

The hyperluminous quasar APM 08279+5255 was, when discovered in 1998, given an absolute magnitude of −32.2. High-resolution imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope and the 10 m Keck Telescope revealed that this system is gravitationally lensed. A study of the gravitational lensing of this system suggests that the light emitted has been magnified by a factor of ~10. It is still substantially more luminous than nearby quasars such as 3C 273.

Quasars were much more common in the early universe than they are today. This discovery by Maarten Schmidt in 1967 was early strong evidence against steady-state cosmology and in favor of the Big Bang cosmology. Quasars show the locations where supermassive black holes are growing rapidly (by accretion). Detailed simulations reported in 2021 showed that galaxy structures, such as spiral arms, use gravitational forces to 'put the brakes on' gas that would otherwise orbit galaxy centers forever; instead the braking mechanism enabled the gas to fall into the supermassive black holes, releasing enormous radiant energies. These black holes co-evolve with the mass of stars in their host galaxy in a way not fully understood at present. One idea is that jets, radiation and winds created by the quasars shut down the formation of new stars in the host galaxy, a process called "feedback". The jets that produce strong radio emission in some quasars at the centers of clusters of galaxies are known to have enough power to prevent the hot gas in those clusters from cooling and falling on to the central galaxy.

Quasars' luminosities are variable, with time scales that range from months to hours. This means that quasars generate and emit their energy from a very small region, since each part of the quasar would have to be in contact with other parts on such a time scale as to allow the coordination of the luminosity variations. This would mean that a quasar varying on a time scale of a few weeks cannot be larger than a few light-weeks across. The emission of large amounts of power from a small region requires a power source far more efficient than the nuclear fusion that powers stars. The conversion of gravitational potential energy to radiation by infalling to a black hole converts between 6% and 32% of the mass to energy, compared to 0.7% for the conversion of mass to energy in a star like our Sun. It is the only process known that can produce such high power over a very long term. (Stellar explosions such as supernovas and gamma-ray bursts, and direct matter–antimatter annihilation, can also produce very high power output, but supernovae only last for days, and the universe does not appear to have had large amounts of antimatter at the relevant times.)

Gravitationally lensed quasar HE 1104-1805

 

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Animation shows the alignments between the spin axes of quasars and the large-scale structures that they inhabit.

Since quasars exhibit all the properties common to other active galaxies such as Seyfert galaxies, the emission from quasars can be readily compared to those of smaller active galaxies powered by smaller supermassive black holes. To create a luminosity of 10⁴⁰ watts (the typical brightness of a quasar), a supermassive black hole would have to consume the material equivalent of 10 solar masses per year. The brightest known quasars devour 1000 solar masses of material every year. The largest known is estimated to consume matter equivalent to 10 Earths per second. Quasar luminosities can vary considerably over time, depending on their surroundings. Since it is difficult to fuel quasars for many billions of years, after a quasar finishes accreting the surrounding gas and dust, it becomes an ordinary galaxy.

Radiation from quasars is partially "nonthermal" (i.e., not due to black-body radiation), and approximately 10% are observed to also have jets and lobes like those of radio galaxies that also carry significant (but poorly understood) amounts of energy in the form of particles moving at relativistic speeds. Extremely high energies might be explained by several mechanisms (see Fermi acceleration and Centrifugal mechanism of acceleration). Quasars can be detected over the entire observable electromagnetic spectrum, including radio, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray and even gamma rays. Most quasars are brightest in their rest-frame ultraviolet wavelength of 121.6 nm Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen, but due to the tremendous redshifts of these sources, that peak luminosity has been observed as far to the red as 900.0 nm, in the near infrared. A minority of quasars show strong radio emission, which is generated by jets of matter moving close to the speed of light. When viewed downward, these appear as blazars and often have regions that seem to move away from the center faster than the speed of light (superluminal expansion). This is an optical illusion due to the properties of special relativity.

Quasar redshifts are measured from the strong spectral lines that dominate their visible and ultraviolet emission spectra. These lines are brighter than the continuous spectrum. They exhibit Doppler broadening corresponding to mean speed of several percent of the speed of light. Fast motions strongly indicate a large mass. Emission lines of hydrogen (mainly of the Lyman series and Balmer series), helium, carbon, magnesium, iron and oxygen are the brightest lines. The atoms emitting these lines range from neutral to highly ionized, leaving it highly charged. This wide range of ionization shows that the gas is highly irradiated by the quasar, not merely hot, and not by stars, which cannot produce such a wide range of ionization.

Like all (unobscured) active galaxies, quasars can be strong X-ray sources. Radio-loud quasars can also produce X-rays and gamma rays by inverse Compton scattering of lower-energy photons by the radio-emitting electrons in the jet.

Iron quasars show strong emission lines resulting from low-ionization iron (Fe II), such as IRAS 18508-7815.

Spectral lines, reionization, and the early universe

Main articles: Reionization and Chronology of the Universe

 

This view, taken with infrared light, is a false-color image of a quasar-starburst tandem with the most luminous starburst ever seen in such a combination.

 

Spectrum from quasar HE 0940-1050 after it has travelled through intergalactic medium

Quasars also provide some clues as to the end of the Big Bang's reionization. The oldest known quasars (z = 6)^{[needs update]} display a Gunn–Peterson trough and have absorption regions in front of them indicating that the intergalactic medium at that time was neutral gas. More recent quasars show no absorption region, but rather their spectra contain a spiky area known as the Lyman-alpha forest; this indicates that the intergalactic medium has undergone reionization into plasma, and that neutral gas exists only in small clouds.

The intense production of ionizing ultraviolet radiation is also significant, as it would provide a mechanism for reionization to occur as galaxies form. Despite this, current theories suggest that quasars were not the primary source of reionization; the primary causes of reionization were probably the earliest generations of stars, known as Population III stars (possibly 70%), and dwarf galaxies (very early small high-energy galaxies) (possibly 30%).

Quasars show evidence of elements heavier than helium, indicating that galaxies underwent a massive phase of star formation, creating population III stars between the time of the Big Bang and the first observed quasars. Light from these stars may have been observed in 2005 using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, although this observation remains to be confirmed.

Quasar subtypes

The taxonomy of quasars includes various subtypes representing subsets of the quasar population having distinct properties.

• Radio-loud quasars are quasars with powerful jets that are strong sources of radio-wavelength emission. These make up about 10% of the overall quasar population.
• Radio-quiet quasars are those quasars lacking powerful jets, with relatively weaker radio emission than the radio-loud population. The majority of quasars (about 90%) are radio-quiet.
• Broad absorption-line (BAL) quasars are quasars whose spectra exhibit broad absorption lines that are blueshifted relative to the quasar's rest frame, resulting from gas flowing outward from the active nucleus in the direction toward the observer. Broad absorption lines are found in about 10% of quasars, and BAL quasars are usually radio-quiet. In the rest-frame ultraviolet spectra of BAL quasars, broad absorption lines can be detected from ionized carbon, magnesium, silicon, nitrogen, and other elements.
• Type 2 (or Type II) quasars are quasars in which the accretion disk and broad emission lines are highly obscured by dense gas and dust. They are higher-luminosity counterparts of Type 2 Seyfert galaxies.
• Red quasars are quasars with optical colors that are redder than normal quasars, thought to be the result of moderate levels of dust extinction within the quasar host galaxy. Infrared surveys have demonstrated that red quasars make up a substantial fraction of the total quasar population.
• Optically violent variable (OVV) quasars are radio-loud quasars in which the jet is directed toward the observer. Relativistic beaming of the jet emission results in strong and rapid variability of the quasar brightness. OVV quasars are also considered to be a type of blazar.
• Weak emission line quasars are quasars having unusually faint emission lines in the ultraviolet/visible spectrum.

Role in celestial reference systems

The energetic radiation of the quasar makes dark galaxies glow, helping astronomers to understand the obscure early stages of galaxy formation.

Because quasars are extremely distant, bright, and small in apparent size, they are useful reference points in establishing a measurement grid on the sky. The International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) is based on hundreds of extra-galactic radio sources, mostly quasars, distributed around the entire sky. Because they are so distant, they are apparently stationary to our current technology, yet their positions can be measured with the utmost accuracy by very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI). The positions of most are known to 0.001 arcsecond or better, which is orders of magnitude more precise than the best optical measurements.

Multiple quasars

A grouping of two or more quasars on the sky can result from a chance alignment, where the quasars are not physically associated, from actual physical proximity, or from the effects of gravity bending the light of a single quasar into two or more images by gravitational lensing.

When two quasars appear to be very close to each other as seen from Earth (separated by a few arcseconds or less), they are commonly referred to as a "double quasar". When the two are also close together in space (i.e. observed to have similar redshifts), they are termed a "quasar pair", or as a "binary quasar" if they are close enough that their host galaxies are likely to be physically interacting.

As quasars are overall rare objects in the universe, the probability of three or more separate quasars being found near the same physical location is very low, and determining whether the system is closely separated physically requires significant observational effort. The first true triple quasar was found in 2007 by observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory Mauna Kea, Hawaii. LBQS 1429-008 (or QQQ J1432-0106) was first observed in 1989 and at the time was found to be a double quasar. When astronomers discovered the third member, they confirmed that the sources were separate and not the result of gravitational lensing. This triple quasar has a redshift of z = 2.076. The components are separated by an estimated 30–50 kiloparsecs (roughly 97,000-160,000 light years), which is typical for interacting galaxies. In 2013, the second true triplet of quasars, QQQ J1519+0627, was found with a redshift z = 1.51, the whole system fitting within a physical separation of 25 kpc (about 80,000 light years).

The first true quadruple quasar system was discovered in 2015 at a redshift z = 2.0412 and has an overall physical scale of about 200 kpc (roughly 650,000 light years).

A multiple-image quasar is a quasar whose light undergoes gravitational lensing, resulting in double, triple or quadruple images of the same quasar. The first such gravitational lens to be discovered was the double-imaged quasar Q0957+561 (or Twin Quasar) in 1979. An example of a triply lensed quasar is PG1115+08. Several quadruple-image quasars are known, including the Einstein Cross and the Cloverleaf Quasar, with the first such discoveries happening in the mid-1980s.