Quasars

Last week had a lively media buzz about the “supermoon,” an event when a full moon or a new moon is around its nearest orbital point to Earth. If we’re going to discuss cool cosmic stuff, then let me buzz about this for a bit: quasars.

After all, you already know all about the moon. You’ve been seeing it your entire life. But it’s likely that you’ve never heard much about quasars. So let’s leap from the very familiar to the very strange.

Quasars are fire-breathing cosmic dragons, hiding in the deep recesses of space, and spewing streams of energy with such vigor that they can outshine entire galaxies.

Dragons, of course, have been understood for centuries; they menace damsels, devour knights, live in caves, and smoke too much. Quasars, on the other hand, are recent discoveries. Oh, the quasars themselves have been around a long time. But it took modern technology to bring them to our attention. This is one of those “cool discovery” chapters in science.

Although people turned telescopes skyward from the very minute they had telescopes, visual observation isn’t the only technique used in astronomy. Visual light is just one thin slice of the emissions spectrum; we use it because we have built-in receivers called “eyeballs.” But modern electronics allow astronomers to observe a far broader spectrum of stuff.

So, in the 1950s, using radio telescopes, astronomers noticed some powerful sources of x-rays coming from deep space. In the early 1960s, they correlated visible light sources with those x-rays. So they pretty much placed the face with the voice. It was a very big deal.

That’s how they discovered quasars. So what are they?

The theory is that quasars come from supermassive black holes that are devouring the hearts of their host galaxies. (That’s really the word, by the way, “supermassive.”) As the galactic material is sucked into the black hole it swirls around like water going down a flushed toilet.

In a toilet, this swirling action is a great way to rinse out coffee cups.

In a black hole, this swirling action releases all sorts of energy, and if this happens on a super-duper large scale, it’s a quasar.

Here’s some scale: One well-known quasar is called 3C 273. It’s said to be 4 trillion times brighter than the sun. Because of this freakish power, although it’s really far away, as in 2.4 billion light-years, it’s easily visible in a medium-sized backyard telescope, though in such equipment it just looks like a faint star.

Quasars, black holes, and other freaky things give scientists hints about how gravity behaves in extreme circumstances. This is a hot issue these days for one very unnerving reason: They don’t really know what gravity is! Gravity behaves differently than the other basic forces of nature, so something is screwy here. This is Einstein-level stuff, so don’t look to me for any answers, I don’t even understand the questions.

As quasars show, reality is a lot stranger than fiction. The universe is very dynamic, everything is moving and swirling and exploding as old stars and planets die and new stars and planets are born. If you want to appreciate nature, the universe is as natural as it gets. What could be more natural?

On the appreciation front, here’s something interesting: NASA offers a do-it-yourself kit for radio astronomy, called Radio Jove. It costs $210, is geared toward listening to the natural emissions from Jupiter and the sun, and is well-suited for school projects. It’s easy to find on the Web.

Radio astronomy is, of course, super-charged by advances in electronics, so it’s going to be a bigger deal in the years to come. The Pacific is represented in this realm, with major radio telescopes operating in Hawaii and New Zealand, and Australia will join the action in a few years for a big new project. Some devices have been launched into space, but I think this is, so far, a pretty sparse field. There will eventually be a major project on the moon, which will also serve to get the detectors beyond the noisy veil of our atmosphere.

Today’s youngsters who are building radio Jove kits will become the Ph.D.s who lead radio astronomy into new discoveries. Does anyone on Saipan aspire to join their ranks? That would be cool.

Anyway, getting back to this supermoon thing, just so you don’t think I’m snubbing the gig: The best supermoon of the year will occur on Aug. 11 at 4:09am Saipan time. So if you’re one of those folks with supermoon fever, well, now you’ve got something to look forward to.

In the meantime, I’ll just brew come coffee, settle into my beach chair, and enjoy the cosmic view. Care to join me? I rinsed out a cup for you.