Astronomers found a monstrous jet powering through the early universe
Quasars, a portmanteau for "quasi-stellar objects," are blindingly bright galaxy cores. Through powerful telescopes, these distant objects can look like stars, but they're the resulting light from feasting supermassive black holes.
The jet, sprawling at least 200,000 light-years, double the span of the Milky Way, emerges from the J1601+3102 quasar, born less than 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. Though a billion years later may not seem like the early days, that period occurred when the universe was only nine percent of its current age of 13.8 billion — making it a mere toddler.
"It's only because this object is so extreme that we can observe it from Earth, even though it's really far away," said Anniek Gloudemans, a research fellow at the federally funded NOIRLab, in a statement.
SEE ALSO: Scientists found a colossal black hole near the dawn of time
The J1601+3102 quasar's radio jet was first discovered by the Low Frequency Array Telescope. Credit: LOFAR / DECaLS / DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys / LBNL / DOE / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA
Finding this radio jet, first discovered by the European Low Frequency Array Telescope, is an enormous achievement. Follow-up observations ensued in near-infrared light with the Gemini North Telescope and in visible light with Hobby Eberly Telescope. A research team has characterized the object in a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
These jets become elusive the farther back in time astronomers try to look because of the so-called cosmic microwave background. The ancient radiation, the earliest fossil of light from 380,000 years after the Big Bang, tends to swamp out more subtle signals.
Although quasars are technically difficult to find in the early universe, the nearest quasars to Earth are still several hundred million light-years away. That quasars aren't found closer to home is a clue they are ancient relics. Scientists continue to hunt for them because they provide insight into the evolution of galaxies and the universe as a whole.
Black holes in general are some of the most inscrutable things in space. Astronomers believe these invisible giants skulk at the center of virtually all galaxies. Falling into one is an automatic death sentence. Any cosmic stuff that wanders too close reaches a point of no return.
But scientists have observed something weird at the edge of black holes' accretion disks, the rings of rapidly spinning material around the holes, like the swirl of water around a bathtub drain: A tiny amount of the material can suddenly get rerouted. When this happens, high-energy particles get flung outward as a pair of jets, blasting in opposite directions, though astronomers haven't quite figured out how they work. It's also still a mystery when exactly in cosmic history the universe started making them.
Despite this jet's length, it's a pipsqueak compared to others scientists have discovered in later eras. Porphyrion, observed 6.3 billion years after the Big Bang, has a 23 million light-year-long jet. The J1601+3102 quasar is also of modest size, just 450 million times more massive than the sun. Quasars are sometimes known to tip scales at billions of times heavier than the sun.
"Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars," Gloudemans said. "This seems to indicate that you don't necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early universe."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Scientists Created an Antimatter Qubit That Could Upend Physics
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: The explanation behind the universe's matter-antimatter asymmetry—an apparent violation of a fundamental law of nature known as charge-parity-time (CPT) symmetry—is one of particle physics' greatest mysteries. A new study details how scientists at CERN created antimatter qubits, which could improve physicists investigations into magnetic moment differences between matter and antimatter. This breakthrough—along with CERN's ongoing effort to protect the transport of particles to other laboratories—could drastically improve baryonic antimatter research. The universe is filled with something instead of nothing—and that's a problem. Well, a quick clarification: This unexplainable quirk of science is great news for you, me, and every other living being throughout the cosmos, since it means that we (being made of matter) get to exist. But from a particle physicist's perspective, it represents a massive gap of knowledge in the Standard Model, which is our current best guess at explaining the strange world of the subatomic. The Swiss-based particle physics laboratory CERN, home of the Large Hadron Collider, is at the forefront of exploring this particular unknown, which is an apparent violation of a fundamental law of nature known as charge-parity-time (CPT) symmetry. This nearly 75-year-old theory posits that matter and antimatter behave identically, meaning that they should have annihilated each other mere moments after the Big Bang. But for some reason, matter prevailed. Now, a recent study—led by scientists at CERN and published in the journal Nature—details a new tool in their exploratory toolbox for trying to understand why the universe contains something instead of nothing. At its most basic, researchers created the world's first antimatter 'qubit'—the quantum-powered building blocks of quantum computers—in an effort to study matter-antimatter asymmetry with higher fidelity. This was achieved by the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment (BASE) collaboration using the antimatter factory at CERN. Like most things that deal with quantum properties, the main challenge was keeping the antiproton from experiencing decoherence, in which a qubit loses its quantum properties via disruptions from the surrounding environment. The researchers successfully kept the antiproton trapped and oscillating smoothly between quantum states for almost a minute and then measured transitions between magnetic moments using a process known as 'coherent quantum transition spectroscopy.' Although an incredibly complicated process, CERN describes this method like pushing a child on a swingset: With the right push, the swing arcs back and forth in a perfect rhythm. Now imagine that the swing is a single trapped antiproton oscillating between its spin 'up' and 'down' states in a smooth, controlled rhythm. The BASE collaboration has achieved this using a sophisticated system of electromagnetic traps to give an antiproton the right 'push' at the right time. And since this swing has quantum properties, the antimatter spin-qubit can even point in different directions at the same time when unobserved. This qubit isn't destined to run in some hyper-advanced quantum computer. Instead, its role lies in exploring the very edge of the standard model of particle physics. Previously, BASE collaboration has shown that magnetic moments of protons and antiprotons are identical up to just a few parts-per-billion—any detectable deviation would violate CPT symmetry and possibly explain why protons outnumbered antiprotons following the Big Bang. However, these results used incoherent techniques impacted by magnetic field fluctuations and perturbations caused by the measurements themselves. This new technique suppresses those interferences and makes coherent observations that are many times more accurate than previous magnetic moment experiments. 'This represents the first antimatter qubit and opens up the prospect of applying the entire set of coherent spectroscopy methods to single matter and antimatter systems in precision experiments,' BASE spokesperson Stefan Ulmer, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement. 'Most importantly, it will help BASE to perform antiproton moment measurements in future experiments with 10- to 100-fold improved precision.' And this new level of precision is only the beginning. A simultaneous effort known as BASE-STEP (Symmetry Tests in Experiments with Portable Antiprotons) utilizes a portable trap system so antiprotons can be transported to other facilities with more stable environments. In October of last year, BASE-STEP successfully transported 70 protons via truck on a round trip at CERN's main site. This will allow labs throughout Europe—and maybe, one day, the world—to work on one of physics' most puzzling mysteries. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Yahoo
Scientists just made the 1st antimatter 'qubit.' Here's why it could be a big deal
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Physicists at CERN — home of the Large Hadron Collider — have for the first time made a qubit from antimatter, holding an antiproton in a state of quantum superposition for almost a minute. This landmark achievement has been performed by scientists working as part of the BASE collaboration at CERN. BASE is the Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment, which is designed to measure the magnetic moment of antiprotons – in essence, how strongly they interact with magnetic fields. However, while qubits are commonly associated with quantum computing, in this case the antiproton qubit will be used to test for differences between ordinary matter and antimatter. It will specifically help probe the question of why we live in a universe so dominated by ordinary matter when matter and antimatter should have been created in equal quantities during the Big Bang. They're opposites of one another, right? A proton and antiproton have the same mass but opposite charges, for example. In physics, the mirror-image properties between matter and antimatter is referred to as charge-parity-time (CPT) symmetry. CPT symmetry also says that a particle and its antiparticle should experience the laws of physics in the same way, meaning that they should feel gravity or electromagnetism with the same strength, for example (that first one has actually been tested, and indeed an antiprotons falls at the same rate as a proton). So, theoretically, when the universe came into existence, there should have been a 50-50 chance of antimatter or regular matter particles being created. But for some reason, that didn't happen. It's very weird. Even the BASE project found that, to a precision of parts per billion, protons and antiprotons do have the same magnetic moment. Alas, more symmetry. However, the BASE apparatus has enabled physicists to take things one step further. Antiproton antics When matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate one another in a burst of gamma-ray photons, so BASE has to keep them apart. To do so, it uses something called Penning traps, which can hold charged particles in position thanks to the careful deployment of electric and magnetic fields. BASE has two primary Penning traps. One is called the analysis trap, which measures the precession of the magnetic moment around a magnetic field, and the other is the precision trap, which is able to flip the quantum spin of a particle and measure that particle's oscillation in a magnetic field. Quantum physics tells us that particles are born in a state of superposition. Take, for instance, the property of quantum spin, which is just one example of the weirdness of the quantum universe. Despite the name, spin does not describe the actual rotation of a particle; rather, it describes a property that mimics the rotation. How do we know that it isn't a real rotation? If it were, then the properties of quantum spin would mean particles would be spinning many times faster than the speed of light — which is impossible. So, fundamental particles like electrons, protons and antiprotons have quantum spin values, even if they are not really spinning, and these values can be expressed either as a whole number or a fraction. The quantum spin of a proton and antiproton can be 1/2 or –1/2, and it is the quantum spin that generates the particle's magnetic moment. Because of the magic of quantum superposition, which describes how all the possible quantum states exist synchronously in a particle's quantum wave-function, a proton or antiproton can have a spin of both 1/2 or –1/2 at the same time. That is, at least until they are measured and the quantum wave-function that describes the quantum state of the particle collapses onto one value. That's another bit of weirdness of the quantum world — particles have all possible properties at once until they are observed, like Schrödinger's cat being alive and dead at the same time in a box, until someone opens the box. In fact, any kind of interaction with the outside world causes the wave function to collapse in a process known as decoherence. Why this happens is a subject of great debate between the various interpretations of quantum physics. Regardless, by giving an antiproton that is held firmly in the precision trap just the right amount of energy, BASE scientists have been able to hold an antiproton in a state of superposition without decohering for about 50 seconds — a record for antimatter (this has previously been achieved with ordinary matter particles for much longer durations). In doing so, they formed a qubit out of the antiproton. Keep the qubits away! A qubit is a quantum version of a byte used in computer processing. A typical, binary byte can have a value of either 1 or 0. A qubit can be both 1 and 0 at the same time (or, have a spin of 1/2 and –1/2 at the same time), and a quantum computer using qubits could therefore, in principle, vastly accelerate information processing times. However, the antiproton qubit is unlikely to find work in quantum computing because ordinary matter can be used for that more easily without the risk of the antimatter annihilating. Instead, the antiproton qubit could be used to further test for differences between matter and antimatter, and whether CPT symmetry is violated at any stage. "This represents the first antimatter qubit and opens up the prospect of applying the entire set of coherent spectroscopy methods to single matter and antimatter systems in precision experiments," said BASE spokesperson Stefan Ulmer, of the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Japan, in a statement. "Most importantly, it will help BASE to perform antiproton moment measurements in future experiments with 10- to 100-fold improved precision." Currently, BASE's experiments have to take place at CERN, where the antimatter is created in the Large Hadron Collider. However, the next phase of antimatter research will be BASE-STEP (Symmetry Tests in Experiments with Portable Antiprotons), which is a device that contains a portable Penning trap, allowing researchers to move antiprotons securely away from CERN to laboratories with quieter, purpose-built facilities that can reduce exterior magnetic field fluctuations that might interfere with magnetic moment experiments. RELATED STORIES — The Mystery of Antimatter — How 2024 brought us deeper into the world of particle physics — Modern-day alchemy! Scientists turn lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider "Once it is fully operational, our new offline precision Penning trap system, which will be supplied with antiprotons transported by BASE-STEP, could allow us to achieve spin coherence times maybe even ten times longer than in current experiments, which will be a game-changer for baryonic antimatter research," said RIKEN's Barbara Latacz, who is the lead author of the new study. The results are described in a paper that was published on July 23 in the journal Nature.
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Yahoo
The world started with a ‘bang' but will end in a scary ‘big crunch' — and scientists think they know when that will be
Our humble blue planet came into being with the Big Bang — the sudden expansion of the universe outwards. Now, according to astrophysicists and cosmologists, Earth and all of its celestial siblings will likely be swallowed back into the super-small singularity they came from, in what is known as the 'big crunch' theory. Alarming as it sounds, physicists say there's no reason to fret just yet. According to leading experts on the matter, the big crunch theory supposes that the universe will eventually stop expanding and everything will be pulled back together. Cosmologists at Cornell University predict that the big crunch is billions of years away —19.5 to be exact. Henry Tye, a lead researcher at the institution, suggested that the big crunch will begin in 11 billion years, and will take another 8.5 billion years to conclude. Supposing humanity is still around billions of years from now, scientists say it's unlikely we would notice any distinct changes while the big crunch takes place. 'Intelligent civilizations at the scales of solar systems or even galactic scales would not notice any obvious phenomenon because these changes happen at much larger cosmological scales,' Dr Hoang Nhan Luu, a researcher at the Donostia International Physics Center, explained to the Daily Mail. However, one of the warning signs would be a rising cosmic temperature. In a few billion years, it's probable that the universe, including all of its major celestial bodies, will be the same temperature as the surface of the sun. 'Needless to say, all humans will burn up in the furnace of this cosmic hell,' Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, told the Daily Mail. The theory has been swirling among academic circles for decades, but fell out of favor among some camps of researchers several decades back. However, after dark energy — a repellent force that pushes things in the universe apart — was discovered in the '90s and research has progressed, it seems more and more experts are reevaluating their stances. Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Dallas, told Discover Magazine that dark matter research has revealed that the universe isn't slowing down, but rather, its expansion is accelerating less, and eventually, it will come to a slow halt. 'To survive, human beings have to move to the edge of our solar system or beyond. We have a few billion years' time to prepare for that trip,' Tye explained to the Daily Mail. The big crunch theory spells trouble for humanity in several ways, but it's far from the first scary-sounding phenomenon that our planet has undergone. Earth's magnetic poles reversed 780,000 years ago. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany created a soundscape of the geological gymnastics routine, which they dubbed a 'disharmonic cacophony.' Solve the daily Crossword
