These 63 Newly Discovered Quasars from Ancient Universe may Reveal Big Bang's Aftermath

Quasars, also known as supermassive black holes that are the heart of proportionally supermassive galaxies, have always been an elusive part of astronomers' pursuit of understanding the universe and its past. New findings from a team in Carnegie just unearthed 63 new quasars that are from a time when the currently 14-year-old universe was still young and fledging at just one billion years old.

What are quasars?

According to a report from Space, quasars stand for "quasi-stellar radio sources" and are said to be created by particles accelerated away from black holes at velocities nearly at the speed of light. Most of them are billions of light years away.

"Quasars are among the brightest objects and they literally illuminate our knowledge of the early universe," Eduardo Bañados, leader of the Carnegie group, said in a report from Phys Org.

The only problem is ancient quasars are quite rare and difficult to find, so the data the scientific community has gotten from them are still limited. Bañados' 63 newly-discovered quasars - the largest number of such distant quasars included in a single article - will surely go a long way in the study and observation of this area of study.

The key to understanding the universe

There is much to learn from these ancient objects. As these quasars formed just a billion years after Big Bang, they are likely to offer a lot of information about that first era in the universe's life. Of particular interest are the mysteries involved during the transition from darkness to illumination.

"The formation and evolution of the earliest light sources and structures in the universe is one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy," Bañados explained. "Very bright quasars such as the 63 discovered in this study are the best tools for helping us probe the early universe. But until now, conclusive results have been limited by the very small sample size of ancient quasars."