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6 articles
Relativistic jets from quasars are the most violent outputs in the universe — so could one ever point our way? We run the numbers on alignment odds, size up the nearest active galactic nuclei, and explain why Andromeda, not some distant monster, is the real long-term plotline.
Some of the brightest objects in existence are nearly impossible to find — because they're wrapped in a blanket of space grime. From infrared goggles to radio X-rays, here are seven clever tricks astronomers use to catch what the dust is hiding.
Forget just watching the sky—join it. From Zooniverse black hole hunts to backyard blazar monitoring, here's how amateur astronomers across America are genuinely contributing to quasar science, and how you can start tonight.
A supermassive black hole in the Perseus cluster has been humming a B-flat for billions of years. Thanks to data sonification, you can now listen to it — and the practice is changing who gets to explore the cosmos.
Most supermassive black holes spend their lives dozing quietly at the centers of their galaxies. But every so often, one wakes up hungry — and when it does, an entire galaxy lights up like a Vegas marquee. Recent surveys have caught several of these ignitions in the act, and they raise a fun question: could the Milky Way's own sleeping giant, Sagittarius A*, ever join the club?
The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding impossibly massive quasars lurking in the universe's first billion years. Each new discovery tightens the screws on a question that keeps astronomers up at night: how do you build a billion-solar-mass black hole in a cosmic instant?