Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter.
A well accepted property of black holes is that they cannot sustain a magnetic field of their own. But observations of quasar Q0957+561 indicate that the object powering it does have a magnetic field, Schild's team says. For this reason, they believe that rather than a black hole, this quasar contains something called a magnetospheric eternally collapsing object (MECO). If so, it would be best evidence yet for such an object.
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9620-my sterious-quasar-casts-doubt-on-black-holes.html
Fun Quasar Facts:
Quasars can be as bright as hundreds of galaxies
The first quasars were discovered in the 1950's
The name quasar comes from quasi + star
The brightest quasars are thought to consume 1000 solar masses (1000 suns) of material every year
All known quasars are many billions of years old.
Re: What are Quasars?
