An international team of astronomer has managed an incredible feat . They have peered into the very spirit of a quasar and discovered temperatures much higher than physicists think were possible for this sort of object .
The analytic thinking , print in theAstrophysical Journal Letters , takes full reward of a radio astronomy prank . By look at the same object with two dissimilar and upstage telescopes , you could combine the data and produce an ikon with a much higher resolution .
The investigator used the Russian tuner space telescope , RadioAstron , which orbits almost as far as the Moon and mix it with theArecibo telescopein Puerto Rico , as well as other telescopes in Germany , the continental US , and Mexico to construct a practical telescope 170,000 kilometers ( 106,000 miles ) across .
This allowed them to look at the fabulously bright quasar 3C 273 and the supermassive calamitous hole that is power it . The telescopes were able to observe a area that is 2.7 light - months across , which , since the galaxy is 2.4 billion light - year from Earth , is equivalent to seeing a golf ball on the Moon .
The observations themselves are telling but what the astronomer found is even more spectacular . Based on the brightness , the physical object must have a temperature of 40 trillion Kelvin ( 72 Trillion ° F ) . According to present theories , the maximum tolerate temperature from a quasar discharge should be 1 trillion William Thompson .
" Temperatures this gamy test our sympathy of the purgative in the vicinity of supermassive black-market hole at the heart of 3C 273 , " said Dr. Tapasi Ghosh , the Very - long - baseline Interferometry ( VLBI ) stave astronomer at the Arecibo Observatory , in astatement . " We hope that Arecibo - RadioAstron observations of other origin will help oneself drop light on this whodunit . "
The supermassive black hole at the center of quasar are circumvent by a bounty of material being pulled aside by the intense gravity of the region . But it ’s not just gravity . Black fix have tremendous magnetic fields that accelerate agitate particles , which end up emitting what we call synchrotron radiation .
This idea is all-important to our understanding of quasars but 3C 273 is hint that it might not give birth a complete picture of what these cosmic behemoth can do .
" We conclude that it is difficult to interpret the data in terms of schematic incoherent synchrotron actinotherapy , " added lead author Dr. Yuri Kovalev of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow .
