SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY — An international team of astrophysicists led by the University of Geneva has detected OP 313, the most distant blazar known to date, located approximately 8,000 million light-years from Earth. The discovery allows scientists to analyze how supermassive black holes functioned during the stage of the cosmos’ formation known as the “Cosmic Noon.”
A Cosmic Beacon Pointing Toward Earth
A blazar is a special type of quasar powered by a supermassive black hole at the center of an active galaxy. Its main characteristic is that it ejects jets of matter and radiation at speeds close to the speed of light, pointing almost directly toward Earth.
- Key instrument: The observation was made using the MAGIC telescope, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands (Spain).
- Epoch of origin: The light detected was emitted when the universe was only about 5 billion years old, in the midst of a transition following the period of peak star formation.
- Acceleration mechanism: The electrons in the jet are accelerated to “relativistic” speeds. When they collide with lower-energy photons around the black hole, they transfer their energy and produce very high-energy gamma rays.
A Glimpse of “Cosmic Noon”
It was previously thought that the early universe was a peaceful era characterized by slow processes. However, recent findings show that between 2,000 and 3,000 million years after the Big Bang, the cosmos experienced a period of extreme turbulence marked by an intense rate of star formation and rapid black hole growth. The detection of OP 313 helps us understand how these monstrous structures accelerated particles to the limits of the laws of cosmic physics.
Source: nmas
