Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the quasar — an extremely bright object powered by matter falling into a super-massive black hole lying in the heart of a galaxy.
First found in 1963, these strange sources of radio waves initially stumped astronomers: They shone as sharply and intensely as nearby stars, but they appeared to be moving away from Earth far too fast to be in our own Milky Way. Scientists called them quasi-stellar radio sources — or quasars for short.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-quasar-anniversary-20130316,0,968215.story
First found in 1963, these strange sources of radio waves initially stumped astronomers: They shone as sharply and intensely as nearby stars, but they appeared to be moving away from Earth far too fast to be in our own Milky Way. Scientists called them quasi-stellar radio sources — or quasars for short.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-quasar-anniversary-20130316,0,968215.story
Article courtesy of The Los Angeles Times by Amina Khan
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