QUASAR ALIGNMENT & UNIVERSE STRUCTURE
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ESO | SCIENCE RELEASE 1438 + TECH PDF + SIMS | 11.19.2014
|| ALIGNMENT OF QUASARS ACROSS BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS ||
VLT Reveals Alignments Between Supermassive Blackhole Axes & Large-Scale Structure
New observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope ( VLT ) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe .
A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years .
The team has also found that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the vast structures in the cosmic web in which they reside .
ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS | VOL 572 | DEC 2014 | TECH
|| ALIGNMENT OF QUASAR POLARIZATIONS WITH LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURES ||
|| ABSTRACT || We have measured the optical linear polarization of quasars belonging to Gpc-scale quasar groups at redshift z โผ 1.3 .
Out of 93 quasars observed , 19 are significantly polarized . We found that quasar polarization vectors are either parallel or perpendicular to the directions of the large-scale structures to which they belong .
Statistical tests indicate that the probability that this effect can be attributed to randomly oriented polarization vectors is of the order of 1% .
We also found that quasars with polarization perpendicular to the host structure preferentially have large emission line widths while objects with polarization parallel to the host structure preferentially have small emission line widths .
Considering that quasar polarization is usually either parallel or perpendicular to the accretion disk axis depending on the inclination with respect to the line of sight , and that broader emission lines originate from quasars seen at higher inclinations , we conclude that quasar spin axes are likely parallel to their host large-scale structures .
SOURCE | SATYAVEDISM.ORG
OM! TAT SAT
