Science / Medicine : Twin Quasars’ Birth Reported

An international team of astronomers last week reported that it may have witnessed the birth of a pair of quasars. Dr. Georges Meylan of NASA’s Space Telescope Institute said his team has detected an object in the constellation Pisces that appears to be a pair of quasars separated by less than 100,000 light years--a small distance in cosmic terms. One light year equals about 6 trillion miles.

Quasi-stellar objects, or quasars, are thought to be the very bright cores of certain galaxies, and some astronomers believe that their intense energy may be caused by their material being pulled inward to giant black holes.

The international team, which also includes scientists from Caltech in Pasadena and from West Germany, said it has discovered what it believes to be the first true set of quasar “twins” using a 40-inch telescope near Le Serena, Chile.

In findings presented at the American Astronomical Society’s national meeting in Alexandria, Va., the researchers said the quasar twins lie so close together in space that astronomers speculate their gravity fields may be interacting with one another and spurring formation of the intensely bright objects.