Why Quasars are so Awesome | Space Time

Quasars ... the most metal thing in the universe. Get your own Space Time t­shirt at Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: Help translate our videos! When Quasars were first discovered the amount of light pouring out of such a tiny dot in space seemed impossible. A hysterical flurry of hypothesizing followed: swarms of neutron stars, alien civilizations harnessing their entire galaxy’s power, bright, fast-moving objects being ejected by our own galaxy’s core. But by the 1980’s we were converging on the most awesome explanation. It goes a little like this: Take a black hole of millions to billions times the mass of the sun. Where from? It turns out every decent-sized galaxy has one at its core. Now drive gas into the galactic core. One way this can happen is when galaxies merge and grow. That gas descends into the waiting black hole’s gravitational well and gains incredible speed on the way. It is swept up in a raging whirlpool around the black hole that we call an accretion disk, where its energy of motion is turned into heat. The heat-glow of the accretion disk is so bright that we can see quasars to the ends of the universe. Previous Episode: The Phantom Singularity Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd Produced by Rusty Ward Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Big Bang Henry Van Styn David Nicklas Giorgio P. Quasar Jelle Slaets Tambe Barsbay Joel Brinton Luna IT Solutions Hypernova Joe Chuck Zegar Craig Peterson Mahan Kaur Jordan Young Ratfeast Vitaly Kovalenko John Hofmann Daniel Lyons Avan & Kyan Griggs Bernardo Higuera Jade Bilkey Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell J Rejc Michael Fischer Dylan Merida Amy Jie Anthony Caridi Avi Goldfinger Corey Smeaton John Pettit Shannan Catalano Florian Stinglmayr Yubo Du Benoit Pagé-Guitard Ronny Polonia Nathan Leniz Jessica Fraley Kirk Mathews Loro Lukic Carl P. Corliss Brandon labonte David Crane Greg Weiss David Matteson Marc Lagarde Eric Jackson Will and Sonja Marple