Ep. 98: Quasars

[Fraser]

Last week we talked about galaxies in general, and hinted at the most violent and energetic ones out there: active galaxies. Quasars have been a mystery for half a century; what kind of object could throw out more radiation than an entire galaxy? A black hole, it turns out, with the mass of hundreds of millions of suns performs this feat. Let's trace back the history of quasars, how they were first discovered and puzzled astronomers for so long. And let's look at what we know today.

More...

[MattFenwick]

I wonder when our Galaxy was last active......
And I also wonder if the milky way moves faster when the black hole is active....
Hmmmm Mysterious Mysteries....well to me atleast

xx

[peter eldergill]

Fraser, I'm not sure how important the perfect accuracy of the transcript potion of episodes are to you, but I found a wrong word. In the paragraph:

So you have something that is roughly Solar System sized and is also giving off huge amounts of life. This is really confusing and pretty much the only way to do this is to cram a Black Hole in there, it’s the only thing dense enough, put an Accretion disc around it (a disk of dust and gas and other material that is streaming in towards the Black Hole) and try to jam that material into the Black Hole so quickly that the Black Hole gets jammed up and magnetic fields form.

I'm pretty sure that the bolded section is not quite right

If it's not really an issue, please let me know.

Pete