Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What's the Huge Large Quasar Group?

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What's the Huge Large Quasar Group? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, I've been wondering something about the large Hadron Collider. Oh,
0:12
Speaker 1: that's right up, my alley. Is it about crazy new particles?
0:16
Speaker 1: Not quite? Is it about making black holes? I am
0:19
Speaker 1: concerned about that, but not this time? Alright, shoot, then
0:23
Speaker 1: what's your question? All right? Why did you call it
0:25
Speaker 1: the large hadron Collider? Why not the you know, modestly
0:29
Speaker 1: sized hadron collider, because it's pretty large in that case,
0:35
Speaker 1: why not the huge hadron Collider or the ginormous hadron Collider.
0:40
Speaker 1: That's the plan for the next one. Man, you gotta
0:42
Speaker 1: leave something in the tank for the next time around.
0:44
Speaker 1: But when does it end? Daniel? Hopefully never. Hi'm Jorgemming,
1:04
Speaker 1: cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
1:07
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and I hope to do experiments
1:10
Speaker 1: one day at the very large hadron collider, not just
1:14
Speaker 1: the huge heatherron collider. Do you plan to retire before
1:17
Speaker 1: the ginormous hadron Collider? I want to work on the
1:21
Speaker 1: ludicrously sized hadron Collider. What's the acronym for that one?
1:26
Speaker 1: I don't know, but the v LHC is an actual thing. Really,
1:30
Speaker 1: that's like in the official name it really is the
1:32
Speaker 1: very Large Hadron Collider. The plan is to put it underground.
1:35
Speaker 1: It's a hundred kilometer radius ring, and that's actually what
1:38
Speaker 1: it's called. I guess there's a you know, president for that.
1:41
Speaker 1: There's a very large array in New Mexico right exactly exactly,
1:46
Speaker 1: so you can just after that, just keep adding varies
1:48
Speaker 1: to it. I suppose the very very large Hadron Collider,
1:51
Speaker 1: the super duper large Hadron Collider. But welcome to our
1:55
Speaker 1: super duper podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
1:59
Speaker 1: production of our radiot in which we tackle things which
2:01
Speaker 1: are very very large and hard to understand and very
2:05
Speaker 1: very small and hard to grapple with. We talk about
2:08
Speaker 1: all the incredible and amazing things and our universe, all
2:12
Speaker 1: the open questions that scientists are puzzling over all the
2:15
Speaker 1: incredible things that we have learned, and explain all of
2:19
Speaker 1: them to you, sometimes with a very large banana joke,
2:22
Speaker 1: because there is a lot out there in the universe
2:24
Speaker 1: to explore and for us to see. But I guess
2:26
Speaker 1: the problem is that we are stuck in a small
2:28
Speaker 1: corner of the milk Way, which isn't a small corner
2:31
Speaker 1: of the universe, and so we need some pretty big
2:35
Speaker 1: telescopes and instruments to see what's out there in this
2:38
Speaker 1: vast cosmos. That's right, we are exploring the universe, but
2:42
Speaker 1: we're doing it just with our eyeballs. Imagine you wanted
2:45
Speaker 1: to know what was all over the Earth, but you
2:47
Speaker 1: were sort of stuck in a lighthouse and all you
2:49
Speaker 1: could do is look out the window with really powerful
2:51
Speaker 1: telescopes and trying to see as far as you could.
2:54
Speaker 1: So that's where we are as a species. We can't
2:56
Speaker 1: yet travel to the stars, but we can wait for
2:59
Speaker 1: information from the stars to come here to Earth and
3:02
Speaker 1: give us clues because there is a lot of information
3:04
Speaker 1: coming at us from everywhere, right and I meaning the
3:07
Speaker 1: universe is basically bathing us and information and stories about
3:11
Speaker 1: what happened and how things came to be and why
3:14
Speaker 1: things are the way they are. And it's really up
3:16
Speaker 1: to us to figure out how to decode this information
3:19
Speaker 1: and how to read it and how to figure out
3:21
Speaker 1: what it means. Yeah, and it's frustrating to me sometimes
3:24
Speaker 1: that we're not doing more to capture that information. You know,
3:27
Speaker 1: to see deep into the universe, you need to look
3:29
Speaker 1: at really faint signals of far away galaxies, and those
3:33
Speaker 1: things can't be seen just by your eye. You need
3:35
Speaker 1: like specialized telescopes, and so far humanity has only built
3:38
Speaker 1: a few of them, which means that most of the
3:40
Speaker 1: information about the secrets and the structure of the universe
3:43
Speaker 1: it's just sort of like landing on Earth and getting
3:45
Speaker 1: absorbed by, you know, plants and rocks and stuff. I'm
3:48
Speaker 1: sure the plants are getting some pretty good information about
3:51
Speaker 1: the universe, probably that maybe they've already figured things out, Daniel,
3:54
Speaker 1: and we thought to ask them. Oh my god, that
3:56
Speaker 1: sounds like a really fun science fiction movie where we
3:58
Speaker 1: discovered that plants are actually a globe sized telescope and
4:01
Speaker 1: that they're doing their own astronomy. Wow. Well, I thought
4:04
Speaker 1: you were a couch potato anyways, Daniel, wouldn't that count
4:07
Speaker 1: as a plant scientists astrophysicists. Well, that means that couch
4:10
Speaker 1: potatoes are actually doing work right, because they're sitting there
4:13
Speaker 1: absorbing information from the universe. Yeah, and so I guess
4:18
Speaker 1: the more we want to look out into the universe,
4:20
Speaker 1: the bigger the telescope we need, and the more we
4:23
Speaker 1: want to probe into the particulars of matter and what
4:26
Speaker 1: everything is made out of. The more powerful and bigger
4:29
Speaker 1: microscopes you need, yeah, exactly. And as we peer deeper
4:33
Speaker 1: into the universe with our bigger and bigger telescopes, were
4:36
Speaker 1: constantly finding new stuff out there, Weird things we can't understand,
4:41
Speaker 1: things that don't seem to make sense, things that surprise
4:44
Speaker 1: us about what's out there in the universe. But that's
4:46
Speaker 1: what exploration is all about. You don't look out into
4:49
Speaker 1: the universe just to have your ideas confirmed. You look
4:51
Speaker 1: out there to be surprised, to be shocked, to have
4:54
Speaker 1: your mind blown by the kinds of crazy stuff that
4:57
Speaker 1: we see. Yeah, because it seems like we're discovering at
4:59
Speaker 1: the universe is bigger and bigger and bigger than we expected.
5:03
Speaker 1: I mean, we initially thought that was just the Earth,
5:06
Speaker 1: and then the Sun and the Moon and the Solar System,
5:08
Speaker 1: and now we're up to you know, bubbles of gigantic
5:12
Speaker 1: galaxy clusters. Things get pretty big out there. Things get
5:16
Speaker 1: pretty big out there. And one question we ask is
5:18
Speaker 1: like how big do things get? What is the biggest
5:22
Speaker 1: thing in the universe? And it feels like every year
5:25
Speaker 1: astronomy crowns a new biggest thing in the universe. I
5:29
Speaker 1: feel like that should have like stadium echo sound effects
5:32
Speaker 1: their biggest thing in the universe. Yeah, and that also
5:36
Speaker 1: raises the problem of what do you call the new
5:37
Speaker 1: things when you find out there are bigger things? Because
5:39
Speaker 1: we call something the big dipper. You know what if
5:41
Speaker 1: you find a bigger dipper exactly, well you call it
5:44
Speaker 1: the bigger dipper or the very big dipper. And so
5:46
Speaker 1: there is apparently a very large thing, possible large thing
5:51
Speaker 1: out there in the universe, so big that it needs
5:53
Speaker 1: to adjectives to describe how big it is. It's so
5:56
Speaker 1: big they named it twice so to be on the podcast,
5:59
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about out what is the huge Large
6:07
Speaker 1: Quasar group. You can't even get that name out without
6:11
Speaker 1: a chuckle. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, I feel like
6:15
Speaker 1: the most expraneous word there is group. It is the
6:18
Speaker 1: most boring word in there. Like, if you have huge
6:21
Speaker 1: large and quasar, why do you need the group? That's
6:23
Speaker 1: like calling it, you know, the a team group. It
6:27
Speaker 1: sounds like a consulting firm, doesn't it Which part the
6:30
Speaker 1: eighteen group or the Huge Large Quasar group? Both both.
6:35
Speaker 1: We need to optimize the efficiency of this factory somebody
6:37
Speaker 1: give a call to the Huge Large Quasar Group. They
6:39
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. I don't know. They sound pretty
6:41
Speaker 1: expensive to me. I would go for the you know,
6:45
Speaker 1: modestly sized, economically size quasar group. That sounds good. But
6:50
Speaker 1: it is the thing out there at the Huge Large
6:51
Speaker 1: Quasar Group, and it's self self explanatory. But I'm guessing
6:56
Speaker 1: there are some mysteries and some unknowns about this huge
6:59
Speaker 1: object in space. Absolutely, there are lots of unknowns, and
7:02
Speaker 1: there are some really basic ideas about how big things
7:05
Speaker 1: can get in the universe, and this thing flies in
7:08
Speaker 1: the face of our concepts of size. It's huge, not
7:13
Speaker 1: just in size but significance. That's right, It's more than huge.
7:16
Speaker 1: It's huge large all right. Well, as usually, we were
7:19
Speaker 1: wondering how many people had heard of this Huge Large
7:21
Speaker 1: Quazer group, and so Daniel went out there into the
7:25
Speaker 1: wilds of the Internet to ask people if they knew
7:27
Speaker 1: what the Huge Large Quazer Group is. So thanks to
7:30
Speaker 1: everybody who participated, and if you are willing to volunteer
7:34
Speaker 1: to answer questions about absurdly named astronomical objects in the future,
7:38
Speaker 1: please write to me two questions at Daniel and Jorge
7:41
Speaker 1: dot com. So think about it for a second. If
7:43
Speaker 1: someone ask you what you thought the huge Large Quazer
7:46
Speaker 1: Group is, what would you say. Here's what people had
7:49
Speaker 1: to say. I'm gonna go wild here. It's either h
7:55
Speaker 1: Bent from the eighties, or it is a huge, large
8:00
Speaker 1: group of quasers somewhere in our universe a total guess,
8:05
Speaker 1: a very large array of radio telescopes. Maybe the huge
8:10
Speaker 1: large Quizer group is a group of quaisers that are
8:14
Speaker 1: somewhere on the outskirts of our galaxy, a big collection
8:18
Speaker 1: of large objects somewhere in the universe. So I would
8:22
Speaker 1: say a region of the universe where you could find
8:24
Speaker 1: a lot of these quasars. I'm guessing this is some
8:28
Speaker 1: form of quasars that have grouped together or clustered together
8:32
Speaker 1: somewhere in the universe that we've been able to find. Well,
8:36
Speaker 1: most likely it's a an area, probably very big, where
8:42
Speaker 1: you can find a number of quasars that you it's
8:47
Speaker 1: not common to find. It sounds like it's bigger than
8:49
Speaker 1: large Quaisar Group. It sounds like it's really huge. Um,
8:53
Speaker 1: and it sounds like they're getting pretty lazy with the naming.
8:56
Speaker 1: Man Jorge is gonna have fun with that one. I
9:00
Speaker 1: bet um. It sounds like it's totally awesome. It sounds
9:04
Speaker 1: like a group of quasars found that's so awesome that
9:08
Speaker 1: it earned both huge and large and its title. Well,
9:13
Speaker 1: first of all, that's an amazing name, and second of all,
9:17
Speaker 1: I guess it would just be somewhere out in the
9:21
Speaker 1: observable universe where we've seen a bunch of quasars together
9:26
Speaker 1: in a relatively small area for which we don't currently
9:30
Speaker 1: have an explanation. Given the quasars are generally very bright objects,
9:36
Speaker 1: they could be potentially quite far away and we can
9:38
Speaker 1: still see them. All right, some pretty fun answers they're
9:42
Speaker 1: including one that predicted I would have fun with this one,
9:45
Speaker 1: and I have to say, I having no fun, Daniel.
9:47
Speaker 1: It's a lot of words to say together, no fun, fun. Well,
9:51
Speaker 1: I'm having fun with it. I definitely picked this one
9:54
Speaker 1: just to sort of taunt you about astronomical name. So
9:57
Speaker 1: this is an actual thing, Like there are papers with
9:59
Speaker 1: these words in the title, the Huge Large Quasar Group.
10:02
Speaker 1: It's an actual thing. Is actually a subject of controversy.
10:06
Speaker 1: People fight about the Huge Large Quasar Group. There are
10:09
Speaker 1: like dueling presentations about it. Really, Like do they fight
10:12
Speaker 1: about whether it qualifies as huge, Like, do you fight
10:16
Speaker 1: over the adjective like, no, it's more like a really large,
10:20
Speaker 1: or it's more like a ginormous huge. Doesn't capture it now?
10:24
Speaker 1: Actually what they fight over is the word group the
10:28
Speaker 1: group or is it more like a you know, a
10:30
Speaker 1: solo endeavor? Yeah? Is it a band from the eighties
10:33
Speaker 1: or is it an astronomical object? Right? Right? Do they
10:36
Speaker 1: actually you know, agree on things or is it more
10:38
Speaker 1: like a collective? Maybe it's a huge large quasar collective.
10:42
Speaker 1: It's a co op, right, they grow their own organic veggies.
10:45
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into what this huge large
10:47
Speaker 1: quasar group is. And I guess maybe we'll start with
10:50
Speaker 1: one of the first words there, quasar. Daniel, maybe remind
10:54
Speaker 1: us what a quasar is. Yeah, My favorite thing about
10:56
Speaker 1: the Huge large Quasar Group is that every word you
10:59
Speaker 1: add adds a layer of mystery and intrigue. Right, even
11:03
Speaker 1: just quasars themselves are fascinating. Quasars are some of the
11:07
Speaker 1: brightest things in the universe. They are these sources of
11:11
Speaker 1: radiation that come from the centers of galaxies, and they
11:15
Speaker 1: were discovered first in the nineteen fifties. But they were
11:18
Speaker 1: a huge mystery because people found these things in the
11:21
Speaker 1: sky that were amitting crazy radiation. But then when they
11:24
Speaker 1: looked in the sky to find out what it was,
11:26
Speaker 1: they found these objects that were like really really really
11:29
Speaker 1: far away. And so these things seem to be super
11:32
Speaker 1: bright and really far away, which meant that they must
11:36
Speaker 1: be like incredible sources of radiation to be already that
11:40
Speaker 1: bright when the light gets here to Earth, right, And
11:43
Speaker 1: how did they know that they weren't that far away?
11:46
Speaker 1: Can they just be like a nearby star? How did
11:48
Speaker 1: they tell the difference between this kind of object, like
11:51
Speaker 1: a bright thing in the sky or a regular star. Well,
11:53
Speaker 1: it took them decades to figure that out. What they
11:56
Speaker 1: did is they measured the velocity of these things. So
11:58
Speaker 1: you measured the red shift, like how fast are these
12:00
Speaker 1: things moving away from us? And you can do that
12:03
Speaker 1: by looking at the light spectrum and seeing like, oh,
12:05
Speaker 1: here's the line we expect from hydrogen or from helium.
12:08
Speaker 1: How far is it shifted by the Doppler effect? And
12:11
Speaker 1: that tells you how fast this thing is moving away
12:13
Speaker 1: from us. And because of Hubble's law, we think that
12:16
Speaker 1: things that are further away from us are moving faster,
12:20
Speaker 1: so that helped us place the distance. We say, well,
12:22
Speaker 1: it's moving away from us really really fast, so it
12:25
Speaker 1: might be really distant. But there was a lot of skepticism.
12:28
Speaker 1: People just didn't believe it. It's like it gave them
12:30
Speaker 1: a number that made no sense, like how could this
12:32
Speaker 1: thing be billions of light years away and still be
12:36
Speaker 1: so bright? So they spent a lot of time wondering,
12:39
Speaker 1: just as you say, is it possible it's actually something
12:42
Speaker 1: closer that happens to have a high velocity moving away
12:45
Speaker 1: from us for some other reason. So it took a
12:47
Speaker 1: long time before people accepted that these things were actually real,
12:50
Speaker 1: that quasars really were crazy bright sources of light universe.
12:55
Speaker 1: I guess how did how were they convinced? How did
12:57
Speaker 1: they figure out that that was what was going on?
13:00
Speaker 1: Sort of a typical process in science, and that it
13:02
Speaker 1: took one person who was like crusading for and then
13:04
Speaker 1: the rest of the community gradually came along as the
13:07
Speaker 1: story came together. In order to really build confidence in it,
13:11
Speaker 1: you want like an understanding of the mechanism, like, well,
13:13
Speaker 1: what's generating all that radiation? You can't just believe that
13:16
Speaker 1: it's there. You have to have an understanding of the story,
13:19
Speaker 1: and so in this case, people were wondering, like, what
13:22
Speaker 1: could be creating so much energy? And then in the seventies,
13:26
Speaker 1: when the idea of black holes moved from like theoretical
13:29
Speaker 1: concepts to actually observed objects and things we believed existed
13:33
Speaker 1: in the universe, then we had a candidate for what
13:35
Speaker 1: could be providing these crazy amounts of energy needed to
13:39
Speaker 1: produce that radiation. So when we had the idea that
13:42
Speaker 1: maybe they were black holes at the centers to these
13:44
Speaker 1: galaxies and that they were the engine providing the power
13:47
Speaker 1: and needed for this crazy radiation, that people started to
13:50
Speaker 1: believe maybe this could be real. I see, and are
13:53
Speaker 1: there a lot of these in this guy or are
13:55
Speaker 1: they pretty rare or are they super common? They're actually
13:58
Speaker 1: both a lot of them in the sky, and they're
14:00
Speaker 1: pretty rare. Like we know about seven hundred and fifty
14:03
Speaker 1: thousand quasars out there by now, but it's a very
14:07
Speaker 1: small fraction. Like most galaxies don't have a quasar. Most
14:11
Speaker 1: galaxies are not emitting crazy radiation out into the sky. Yeah,
14:16
Speaker 1: I guess that sounds like a lot, almost a million
14:18
Speaker 1: of them in the sky, But there are billions and
14:20
Speaker 1: billions of stars right. Oh, yeah, they're billions and billions
14:23
Speaker 1: of galaxies out there, trillions of galaxies, and most of
14:26
Speaker 1: them are not quaisars. But you know, by now, we've
14:29
Speaker 1: mapped a lot of them and we've found a good
14:30
Speaker 1: number them. So there's basically a lot of everything in
14:33
Speaker 1: the universe just because the universe is so big and
14:36
Speaker 1: so filled with stuff, or maybe they just have small
14:38
Speaker 1: quasar groups, and it's really fun to think about, like
14:42
Speaker 1: what's actually happening there. You know, people here that black
14:46
Speaker 1: holes are the source of quasars, and they might wonder, like,
14:48
Speaker 1: hold on a second, aren't black holes black, Like they
14:50
Speaker 1: don't emit anything, right, Well, that's true, but black holes
14:54
Speaker 1: combined with like a big blob of stuff around them,
14:57
Speaker 1: can emit a lot of radiation because that's stuff the
15:00
Speaker 1: accretion disc is getting sucked into wards the black hole,
15:03
Speaker 1: but doesn't just like get hoovered up instantly. Right, Things
15:06
Speaker 1: are rotating, they're swirling around the black hole. Takes a
15:09
Speaker 1: while before they fall in, and before they fall in
15:12
Speaker 1: they get like bumped against each other and ground against
15:14
Speaker 1: each other, and so the friction between all the gases
15:17
Speaker 1: that are swirling into the black hole makes for a
15:20
Speaker 1: very hot and intense environment, and that's actually what's doing
15:23
Speaker 1: the quais are ring or the quazing. I'm not sure
15:26
Speaker 1: what the verb is. Really, all that energy and brightness
15:28
Speaker 1: that we see billions of light years away, it's all
15:31
Speaker 1: just from stuff falling into the black hole. Yeah, it's
15:33
Speaker 1: from the black hole's energy. Remember that the black hole
15:36
Speaker 1: has massive gravitational power even outside the event horizon. It
15:40
Speaker 1: squeezes and compresses all these gases that are swirling around it,
15:44
Speaker 1: and that's where the radiation is produced. So the black
15:47
Speaker 1: hole's gravitational power is compressing and squeezing these gases, they're
15:51
Speaker 1: doing the radiating, So it's sort of indirectly from the
15:53
Speaker 1: black hole. And I see interesting. So really a quasar
15:56
Speaker 1: is a black hole or I guess would you call
15:58
Speaker 1: up quays are the stuff around some black hole. Yeah,
16:02
Speaker 1: the black hole is sort of the engine for the quasar.
16:04
Speaker 1: It's providing the power, it's doing the thing needed to
16:06
Speaker 1: generate the radiation. But the quais ourselves, it's not just
16:09
Speaker 1: the black hole. So you know, I would say the
16:12
Speaker 1: stuff at the center of the galaxy that's giving off
16:14
Speaker 1: all this light with the black hole together, that's the
16:16
Speaker 1: whole quasar. I see, And the name comes from quasi
16:20
Speaker 1: stars originally, right, Like people thought they were stars, but
16:22
Speaker 1: they're not quite stars, right, Yeah, we didn't understand what
16:25
Speaker 1: it was, so originally they were called quasi stellar objects,
16:28
Speaker 1: and then that was shortened to quasars. All right, let's
16:32
Speaker 1: get into what a quasar group is. Then I'm gonna
16:35
Speaker 1: guess it's not a boy band or a accounting consulting firm.
16:40
Speaker 1: But we'll dig into that and what could be a
16:42
Speaker 1: huge large quasar group. But first let's take a quick break.
16:57
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about the awesome named huge large
17:01
Speaker 1: quasar group, which is something that might be the biggest
17:05
Speaker 1: thing in the universe that we've seen, or I think
17:07
Speaker 1: we see. And so we talked about what a quasar is.
17:10
Speaker 1: It's a quasi stellar object powered by a black hole
17:14
Speaker 1: that's giving off a lot of radiation. Now, Daniel, what
17:17
Speaker 1: is a large quasar group? Right? So a large quasar
17:20
Speaker 1: group is basically a collection of quasars altogether in a
17:25
Speaker 1: way that we don't necessarily expect. That is, we see
17:28
Speaker 1: these things at the center of galaxies, but as we
17:30
Speaker 1: said earlier, they're not that common, not like every single
17:33
Speaker 1: galaxy has a quasar in it. And so if you
17:35
Speaker 1: see like a bunch of quasars near each other, and
17:38
Speaker 1: then you've gotta wonder, like, what's going on? Is there
17:41
Speaker 1: some reason why you got more quasars there than anywhere else?
17:44
Speaker 1: I see, it's like you see a whole bunch of
17:46
Speaker 1: them together, like in the same neighborhood, or like literally
17:49
Speaker 1: one top of the other. Now just in the same neighborhood.
17:52
Speaker 1: The first one was spotted in two when we saw
17:55
Speaker 1: four quasars really close to each other, not like on
17:58
Speaker 1: top of each other in one galaxy, but like four
18:00
Speaker 1: adjacent galaxies, and all of them are quasars. You know,
18:03
Speaker 1: if it's rare to have a single galaxy have a
18:05
Speaker 1: quasar in it, that having four neighbors altogether, all the
18:09
Speaker 1: quasars is pretty strange. Oh, I see, not all galaxies
18:14
Speaker 1: have a quasar at the center of them. No, exactly,
18:16
Speaker 1: it's pretty rare to have a quasar, right, And so
18:19
Speaker 1: to see four of them together neighboring galaxies with quasars
18:23
Speaker 1: is rare. Is rare, and quasars are not forever. Also,
18:26
Speaker 1: like the conditions you need to create a quays are
18:28
Speaker 1: a supermassive black hole and the gas that swirls around
18:32
Speaker 1: it maybe transient, so like you could have a galaxy
18:35
Speaker 1: that shines it's a quasar for a while and then doesn't.
18:39
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like finding four of these things
18:41
Speaker 1: which are pretty rare, and they're burning at the same time.
18:45
Speaker 1: So it's like an indication that there might be some
18:47
Speaker 1: underlying reason as to why there's this group, why there's
18:51
Speaker 1: this cluster, these rare things happening together. It's like finding
18:54
Speaker 1: four diamonds next to each other. Single diamond is pretty rare.
18:57
Speaker 1: Why if you find four, you let there's something extra
19:00
Speaker 1: diamonded going on around here, right right, it's a large
19:03
Speaker 1: diamond group. It's a large diamond group exactly. The other
19:08
Speaker 1: thing to remember is that quasars are sort of a
19:10
Speaker 1: feature of the earlier universe, Like we're still making quasars,
19:14
Speaker 1: but not as much as we used to, Like quasars
19:17
Speaker 1: peaked a while ago. So what do you mean they're
19:19
Speaker 1: feature of the early universe, Like we're not making them
19:21
Speaker 1: anymore because we still have black holes in the center
19:24
Speaker 1: of galaxies. Why don't we see more quasars? And what
19:28
Speaker 1: happens to them? Do they just turn off? Yeah, so
19:30
Speaker 1: we don't really understand the mechanism for creating quasars, Like,
19:33
Speaker 1: remember that we don't also understand supermassive black holes very well,
19:37
Speaker 1: and so this goes to the question of, like how
19:39
Speaker 1: galaxies form, how you get this much stuff together to
19:42
Speaker 1: create these scenarios. So we don't understand how quasars form,
19:45
Speaker 1: So we don't really know the answer to the question
19:48
Speaker 1: why do they form more in the early universe then now,
19:51
Speaker 1: but we see them all really far away, so they
19:53
Speaker 1: aren't goal like quasars in our neighborhood, which means that
19:57
Speaker 1: the reason we're seeing them far away is because they're
19:58
Speaker 1: basically dying out. Are only seeing the ones from the past,
20:02
Speaker 1: Like the closest quasar to us is about six hundred
20:05
Speaker 1: million light years away. We think that the peak era
20:09
Speaker 1: for making quasars in the universe was about ten billion
20:12
Speaker 1: years ago, and ever since then, like the number of
20:15
Speaker 1: quasars being produced is smaller and smaller, But we don't
20:19
Speaker 1: know why. That's just what we see. That's just what
20:21
Speaker 1: we see. Yeah, and so this is why quasar groups
20:24
Speaker 1: are really interesting. It's like, well, if they're hard to
20:27
Speaker 1: make and they're not really being made very much anymore,
20:29
Speaker 1: what is it that's making them, and how does it
20:31
Speaker 1: make these groups. It's like a clue that might tell
20:34
Speaker 1: us about, you know, the structure of the universe in general,
20:37
Speaker 1: and also what the mechanism is for making these quasars.
20:40
Speaker 1: I see, it's probably a good thing that there isn't
20:42
Speaker 1: aquasor next to us, right, because like the Milky we
20:45
Speaker 1: had a quasar, and we'd be from party toes right
20:47
Speaker 1: like that much brightness coming from the center of the galaxy.
20:50
Speaker 1: We'd be fried when we yeah, exactly, we would be
20:53
Speaker 1: if a quasar were shining right at us. Like. These
20:55
Speaker 1: things can be a thousand times as bright as an
20:58
Speaker 1: entire galaxy, so they're pretty intense. Typically, the quasars tend
21:03
Speaker 1: to shoot off sort of perpendicular to the plane of
21:05
Speaker 1: the galaxy. To imagine the galaxy is a big disc.
21:08
Speaker 1: Because the magnetic fields and everything swirling around, they tend
21:10
Speaker 1: to focus their energy both above and below the disk.
21:14
Speaker 1: And so if the Milky Way was a quasar, if
21:16
Speaker 1: we had a big quasar at the heart, it would
21:18
Speaker 1: probably be shooting off in the space trying other aliens.
21:21
Speaker 1: Probably not us, Oh, I see, They're not like bright
21:24
Speaker 1: objects like the sun that shine in all directions. Quasars
21:27
Speaker 1: are directional that day, like they only shoot light and
21:31
Speaker 1: radiation in one particular direction. Yeah exactly, and that comes
21:34
Speaker 1: from the swirl, right. Remember the disc is swirling around
21:36
Speaker 1: the black hole, and so it's swirling around an axis.
21:39
Speaker 1: So it's along that axis that all these X rays
21:42
Speaker 1: and crazy radiation tends to be admitted. I see. So
21:45
Speaker 1: there may be are probably more quasars in the universe,
21:48
Speaker 1: they just maybe are not pointing in our direction. Yeah. Absolutely.
21:51
Speaker 1: And when we estimate, you know, the number of things
21:53
Speaker 1: in the universe, we try to take that new account.
21:55
Speaker 1: We try to estimate what fraction of these things could
21:58
Speaker 1: we see, and we use them when we to me, like,
22:00
Speaker 1: how many of them are there that we're not seeing necessarily?
22:04
Speaker 1: All right, So they only happened with supermassive black holes,
22:06
Speaker 1: not regular black holes. Yeah exactly. You need a really
22:09
Speaker 1: big black hole to make one of these things. And
22:11
Speaker 1: it's really interesting that they were made in the early
22:14
Speaker 1: universe because we have a lot of questions about like
22:16
Speaker 1: how the structure of the universe was formed. You talked
22:20
Speaker 1: earlier about how we have galaxies and then clusters of
22:23
Speaker 1: galaxies and then superclusters of galaxies we sort of weave
22:27
Speaker 1: together to make this amazing cosmic structure filaments of superclusters
22:32
Speaker 1: and walls surrounding bubbles, And we'd really like to understand
22:35
Speaker 1: how that structure was formed and sort of what the
22:37
Speaker 1: forces at play were. And so we wonder if quasars
22:41
Speaker 1: are a way to understand that, Like, do they only
22:43
Speaker 1: occur when there happens to be like a real density
22:46
Speaker 1: of matter when things like really came together. You've an
22:49
Speaker 1: extra big scooping of over density from the early universe.
22:52
Speaker 1: So it might be that like these things are really
22:55
Speaker 1: helpful probe to show us where there were really dense
22:58
Speaker 1: spots in the early universe. I see, like maybe you
23:00
Speaker 1: only get quasars if there's a particular you know, a
23:04
Speaker 1: set of conditions. And if we can figure out what's
23:07
Speaker 1: going on in these groups, then that could tell us
23:10
Speaker 1: about what was going on early in the universe. Yeah,
23:12
Speaker 1: because we look at the universe and we say, well, well,
23:14
Speaker 1: this is amazing. I see a supercluster here. Why is
23:17
Speaker 1: there a supercluster here? Why is there a supercluster here
23:19
Speaker 1: and not over there? You know, is this really just
23:22
Speaker 1: come from the quantum fluctuations of the early universe. Is
23:26
Speaker 1: there something else going on? Could be like look back
23:29
Speaker 1: to the very history of the early universe and see
23:31
Speaker 1: this sort of thing play out. I see interesting. And
23:34
Speaker 1: so a large quasar group is when you see like
23:37
Speaker 1: four more of them together. So the first one was
23:39
Speaker 1: discovered eighty two has four quasars clustered together, and that
23:43
Speaker 1: was the first time anybody had seen that, and people like, WHOA,
23:45
Speaker 1: that seems pretty weird. And they calculated the probability of
23:49
Speaker 1: this thing just occurring by chance to being like ten
23:52
Speaker 1: to the minus seven. One in ten million universes would
23:56
Speaker 1: have a quasar group like that, just by chance. If
24:00
Speaker 1: quasars were sort of distributed everywhere evenly. I see, like
24:05
Speaker 1: from what we know about the distribution and the probability
24:07
Speaker 1: of getting a quasar to see four of them together
24:10
Speaker 1: is like a weird throw to die. It's a really
24:12
Speaker 1: really unusual throw the die. And anytime you see something
24:15
Speaker 1: weird like that, you wonder, is there something going on?
24:17
Speaker 1: It's just something that made this quasar group happen right
24:21
Speaker 1: here is that that the matter was extra dense, and
24:24
Speaker 1: so you've got like extra big black holes and that's
24:26
Speaker 1: what's powering these quasars. Or you know, is there something
24:30
Speaker 1: else going on? You know, there's plenty of room in
24:33
Speaker 1: understanding the structure of the universe for something new. Right,
24:36
Speaker 1: we know something about the history and the expansion of
24:39
Speaker 1: the universe, but there's a lot we also don't know
24:42
Speaker 1: about what's powering it and what's controlling it, and why
24:44
Speaker 1: it looks this way and not any other way. Well,
24:47
Speaker 1: all right, So that was the first group that they found.
24:49
Speaker 1: And how many of them have they seen so far?
24:52
Speaker 1: So only a handful of these things. They're pretty rare.
24:54
Speaker 1: The second one that they found had twenty three quasars
24:57
Speaker 1: in it is seven, and so that blew people's minds.
25:01
Speaker 1: They were like, if four quasars together in a group
25:03
Speaker 1: is shocking, then twenty three together that's like an orchestra,
25:07
Speaker 1: you know. And so again these are you know, like
25:10
Speaker 1: twenty some galaxies sort of in the same neighborhood, and
25:12
Speaker 1: they all have quasars pointing at us. Yeah, twenty three
25:15
Speaker 1: quasars found in seven, all very close together and with
25:20
Speaker 1: not consistent with just like you know, random distribution of
25:23
Speaker 1: quasar I see, and they're all pointing at us, which
25:25
Speaker 1: is the weird thing, isn't it. Yeah? It suggests that
25:27
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them over there, right, And so
25:29
Speaker 1: we're seeing a tiny fraction of things, and so it
25:31
Speaker 1: suggests like, are there a lots more quasars over there
25:34
Speaker 1: that we're not seeing? And also like are there lots
25:37
Speaker 1: more galaxies that we're not seeing? You know? Are we
25:39
Speaker 1: just seeing the brightest things that are over there? And
25:42
Speaker 1: it's a very very dense region of space chalk filled
25:45
Speaker 1: with galaxies and other crazy stuff, you know, it could
25:48
Speaker 1: be that there's a whole structure of stuff over there
25:50
Speaker 1: we've never seen before, right, right, And so they think
25:53
Speaker 1: quasars maybe are related to density of the early universe,
25:56
Speaker 1: like you know, the desert things are, and we're the
25:59
Speaker 1: more goals you would have on some more chances for quasars.
26:02
Speaker 1: Is that the general idea, that's the general idea, but
26:05
Speaker 1: you know, it's early days and understanding this stuff, so
26:07
Speaker 1: we're at the stage of like, maybe it works this way,
26:10
Speaker 1: maybe it works that way, And that's sort of the
26:13
Speaker 1: general idea. And one supporting piece of evidence is that
26:15
Speaker 1: when we look out for superclusters, you know, like the
26:19
Speaker 1: big collections of galaxies that are loosely grouped together by gravity,
26:23
Speaker 1: we see superclusters at about the same rate as we
26:26
Speaker 1: see large quasar groups, and so people are like, m
26:30
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Maybe superclusters are made by large quazar groups,
26:34
Speaker 1: or maybe large quasar groups are an indication of where
26:37
Speaker 1: you're later going to get a supercluster. Oh, I see.
26:40
Speaker 1: It could be the other way around, like you know,
26:42
Speaker 1: having a lot of quasars in one area somehow, you know,
26:45
Speaker 1: attracts more things to you. Yeah, or it's just an
26:48
Speaker 1: indication that there's already a huge density of mass there. Right.
26:52
Speaker 1: If over density creates large quasar groups, then large quazar
26:56
Speaker 1: groups could tell you where those dense spots are, and
26:59
Speaker 1: then later in the formation of the universe they create superclusters.
27:03
Speaker 1: So large quazar groups happened sort of early on, like
27:06
Speaker 1: a few billion years after the universe is formed. Superclusters
27:09
Speaker 1: take a longer time to gather together the race between
27:13
Speaker 1: gravity and the expansion of the universe. So it could
27:15
Speaker 1: be that where we're seeing these large quazar groups out
27:18
Speaker 1: in distant reaches of space, that this actual moment right now,
27:22
Speaker 1: there may be superclusters of galaxies there, all right, So
27:25
Speaker 1: then those are the large quazler groups, and now they
27:28
Speaker 1: found anything even bigger, and so they needed another actective
27:32
Speaker 1: for these quazar groups, which is the Huge Large Quazer
27:35
Speaker 1: Group exactly. Now, Daniel, why didn't they just call it
27:37
Speaker 1: the I don't know, super large or extra large or
27:42
Speaker 1: you know, venty, but they call it the Huge Large
27:46
Speaker 1: Quazer Group. You know what they were thinking. Have you
27:48
Speaker 1: talked to any of them? I have not talked to them.
27:50
Speaker 1: I imagine that maybe it was just like an honest
27:52
Speaker 1: moment of excitement, you know, like imagine somebody discovering a
27:56
Speaker 1: large Quazer group, realizing how big it is and then going,
27:59
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's huge, and then that name just sticking.
28:02
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like the kind of name you would,
28:04
Speaker 1: you know, come up with after a committee meets or anything. Right,
28:07
Speaker 1: or maybe the lead scientist was named Hugh and which
28:10
Speaker 1: would be very suspicious in my book. Maybe it's just
28:13
Speaker 1: been a misunderstanding. He meant to name it Hughes Large
28:17
Speaker 1: Quizer Group, and now it's called the Huge or make
28:20
Speaker 1: it's like a Danish name. It's actually like Huga. M hm. Alright,
28:24
Speaker 1: let's get into what the Huge Large Quazer Group is
28:27
Speaker 1: and let's talk about how huge it actually is. But
28:30
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. We're talking about the
28:45
Speaker 1: huge large Quazer group, which is it an actual thing
28:48
Speaker 1: and an actual name. They called it the huge large
28:52
Speaker 1: Quazer group because I guess, you know, first we discovered
28:54
Speaker 1: quazer groups, and then they found bigger ones and called
28:57
Speaker 1: them large Quazer groups. And then they found I guess,
29:00
Speaker 1: really big one enough to call it huge, right, Well,
29:03
Speaker 1: you know, quasars are big. And then they found groups
29:06
Speaker 1: of quasars and they're like, wow, these groups are surprisingly large,
29:09
Speaker 1: so they called them large Quaisar groups. And then they
29:12
Speaker 1: found this large Quaisar group, which is shockingly large. It's
29:16
Speaker 1: the biggest large Quaisar group we've ever found, and in fact,
29:19
Speaker 1: it's bigger than anything in the universe is supposed to be.
29:23
Speaker 1: What do you mean, bigger than anything is supposed to be?
29:26
Speaker 1: How big are things supposed to be? Yeah, so there's
29:28
Speaker 1: sort of like a maximum size. We think that things
29:31
Speaker 1: in the universe should be sort of allowed to be
29:34
Speaker 1: based on our understanding of the universe and the age
29:38
Speaker 1: of the universe. Einstein had this idea that the universe
29:41
Speaker 1: should be basically smooth, that if you zoom out far enough,
29:46
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to notice any difference from place
29:48
Speaker 1: to place, like everywhere in the universe should be basically
29:51
Speaker 1: the same if you zoom out far enough, right, But
29:54
Speaker 1: how does that give you a limit? Well, it tells
29:56
Speaker 1: you that you shouldn't see really big structures, Like if
29:59
Speaker 1: you zoom out far and of everything should just be
30:01
Speaker 1: a wash. It should be like the universe is just
30:03
Speaker 1: like static. You shouldn't see like really big effects or
30:07
Speaker 1: you know, large trends or really big objects. So that
30:11
Speaker 1: gives you a limit to like how big something can be,
30:14
Speaker 1: so that you can zoom out and really not see
30:16
Speaker 1: any features anymore. It's like saying, well, the biggest building
30:19
Speaker 1: in the United States is a certain size, and so
30:22
Speaker 1: if you zoom out far enough, you shouldn't be able
30:24
Speaker 1: to make out any buildings anymore. I see it like
30:27
Speaker 1: zooming out of the US and finding bigger and bigger buildings.
30:30
Speaker 1: That would be weird. Yeah, exactly. It's like zooming out
30:32
Speaker 1: and finding a building that stretches from you know, Kansas
30:35
Speaker 1: to California, and you're like, whoa, that's bigger than any
30:37
Speaker 1: feature I thought there was, right right, all right, Well,
30:40
Speaker 1: I guess maybe step us through here. What is this
30:43
Speaker 1: huge large quas or group and how huge is it?
30:46
Speaker 1: And I guess the question is why is it considered
30:49
Speaker 1: a structure in itself? Isn't it just a collection of
30:51
Speaker 1: cos Yeah, that's a great question. So it was found
30:54
Speaker 1: in by one of the same researchers that previously discovered
30:59
Speaker 1: other large quasar groups, so we're sort of an expert
31:02
Speaker 1: in finding these things. And this one has seventy three
31:06
Speaker 1: quasars in it. So the previous record was twenty three quasars.
31:11
Speaker 1: This one just blows it away. It's seventy three quasars
31:13
Speaker 1: all in a big cluster, and it's like four billion
31:17
Speaker 1: light years from end to end. It's like the size
31:20
Speaker 1: of forty thousand milky ways put end to end. Wow,
31:25
Speaker 1: that's a lot of light years. And so you're saying
31:28
Speaker 1: in the space of four billion light years, there's seventy
31:31
Speaker 1: three galaxies in that space that have quasars in them. Yeah, exactly.
31:36
Speaker 1: And are there other galaxies without quasars or is it like,
31:39
Speaker 1: you know, only quasars in galaxies there? No, there are
31:41
Speaker 1: definitely other galaxies there that don't have quasars. But this
31:45
Speaker 1: is a lot more quasars than you expect per galaxy,
31:49
Speaker 1: and they're clustered together in this sort of interesting, sort
31:51
Speaker 1: of blobby shape, and so it looks like a gravitational structure.
31:56
Speaker 1: It looks like it's sort of held together. But again
31:58
Speaker 1: that's weird because is we shouldn't have gravitational structures that
32:03
Speaker 1: are bigger than about a billion and a half light
32:05
Speaker 1: years across I see. I guess the question is how
32:07
Speaker 1: do you make the termination that it's in the same
32:11
Speaker 1: gravitational structure, like there's nothing else around this clump or
32:14
Speaker 1: blob of stuff. Yeah, it's a great question, and it's
32:17
Speaker 1: something that people debate a lot, Like when we look
32:19
Speaker 1: at a supercluster, we asked like, is this thing really
32:23
Speaker 1: held together gravitationally or is it stuff that just happens
32:26
Speaker 1: to be near each other? And I think one way
32:29
Speaker 1: to think about it is like, what is the future
32:31
Speaker 1: of this object? You know, for example, the universe is
32:34
Speaker 1: expanding and so space is being created everywhere and pulling
32:38
Speaker 1: everything apart. But some objects will survive that, like your
32:41
Speaker 1: body and the solar system, and the reason is that
32:44
Speaker 1: they are gravitationally held together. They will survive this expansion.
32:48
Speaker 1: They will still be an object in a billion years.
32:51
Speaker 1: People don't know, and people argue about whether superclusters are
32:55
Speaker 1: gravitationally about objects, and what they mean by that is
32:58
Speaker 1: in a billion years, well listen, still be like this,
33:01
Speaker 1: or will it be torn apart by dark energy? So
33:04
Speaker 1: really it's about this battle between gravity and dark energy
33:07
Speaker 1: and the question about being a gravitationally about object. It's
33:10
Speaker 1: really is gravity the dominant force? Is it the thing
33:13
Speaker 1: that's holding it together? Or is it really just going
33:15
Speaker 1: to get torn apart by dark energy? I see? So
33:18
Speaker 1: there is sort of a sense that they are going
33:20
Speaker 1: to stick together in the future. That's why do you
33:22
Speaker 1: call them a structure? That's the claim. So this guy
33:25
Speaker 1: discovered it, he called it a large quazar group. He said, look,
33:28
Speaker 1: how big this is. It's bigger than anything should be.
33:31
Speaker 1: But it was not universally accepted in the community to
33:34
Speaker 1: be a large quazar group. There were other people said, well,
33:37
Speaker 1: what if it's just a random collection of quasars that
33:39
Speaker 1: aren't sort of like necessarily grouped together into a gravitational structure.
33:44
Speaker 1: How can they not be like do you think they're
33:46
Speaker 1: just like ships passing in the night kind of thing?
33:48
Speaker 1: Or they are too big to be held together by gravity?
33:52
Speaker 1: What would be the alternative The alternative is that it's
33:55
Speaker 1: a random chance that they just happened to be there
33:57
Speaker 1: and they're not held together by gravity. Remember, the reason
34:00
Speaker 1: we're interested in large quasar groups is because we think
34:03
Speaker 1: they might be like indicators of over density. We think
34:07
Speaker 1: they might be a sign that there's an extra stuff
34:10
Speaker 1: there in the universe and that later that will lead
34:12
Speaker 1: to interesting structures like superclusters, etcetera, etcetera. But it might
34:16
Speaker 1: just be Sometimes you get clusters of quasars, like sometimes
34:19
Speaker 1: you find a bunch of diamonds and they're not connected
34:21
Speaker 1: to each other. So there's a debate about whether they
34:24
Speaker 1: are gravitationally bound or not. And that's hard to resolve,
34:27
Speaker 1: you know. The real way to resolve is to sort
34:29
Speaker 1: of watch it for a billion years and see what happens.
34:32
Speaker 1: I see, like, what could happen. They could like you know,
34:34
Speaker 1: float away, or they could stay clumped together. That's what
34:37
Speaker 1: you mean, Like if they fall away from each other,
34:39
Speaker 1: then they weren't really gravitationally bound. Is that the idea? Yeah, exactly.
34:43
Speaker 1: And that's the way I think about this whole question
34:45
Speaker 1: of like what is the biggest thing in the universe.
34:47
Speaker 1: You know, you might wonder like why should the biggest
34:50
Speaker 1: thing in the universe be a billion and a half
34:52
Speaker 1: light years across and not two billion or ten billion
34:54
Speaker 1: or whatever. And it's really again about gravity having time
34:58
Speaker 1: to build things, Like you start from the very early universe.
35:02
Speaker 1: Gravity starts to pull stuff together and make stars and
35:05
Speaker 1: makes galaxies eventually makes galaxy clusters. Each of these things
35:08
Speaker 1: takes time because gravity is pretty weak and these enormous
35:12
Speaker 1: masses that play here, but it takes a long time
35:14
Speaker 1: for gravity to gather this stuff together. And at the
35:17
Speaker 1: same time, it has an opponent, right, dark energy is
35:19
Speaker 1: spreading everything out, and you can run a simulation to
35:22
Speaker 1: the universe and say, what's the biggest thing you would
35:24
Speaker 1: expect gravity to have formed by now, Like in the future,
35:29
Speaker 1: the biggest thing in the universe could be bigger, right
35:31
Speaker 1: if dark energy wasn't playing its game, gravity could make
35:34
Speaker 1: things that are three, four or five ten billion light
35:36
Speaker 1: years across. But we don't think it's had time to
35:39
Speaker 1: make anything that big yet, which is why we think
35:42
Speaker 1: the biggest thing in the universe should be a billion
35:44
Speaker 1: and a half light years across. So this thing being
35:47
Speaker 1: four billion light years across, if it is a real
35:49
Speaker 1: thing built by gravity. Then we don't know how it
35:52
Speaker 1: was made interesting, Like it could have been just like
35:54
Speaker 1: maybe two small groups that just happened to bump into
35:57
Speaker 1: each other. Is that kind of what you mean, Or
35:58
Speaker 1: like three groups that just happened to cluster. Yeah, exactly,
36:01
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily one thing. It could just be like
36:04
Speaker 1: three smaller things near each other. And so that's the question.
36:07
Speaker 1: So there were these papers back and forth in astronomy,
36:10
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, look, we found this big thing and
36:12
Speaker 1: violates a deep law of the universe, and somebody else saying, no,
36:15
Speaker 1: I think it's just random, and here's another way to
36:17
Speaker 1: analyze its statistically that shows that's not actually that unlikely
36:21
Speaker 1: to find that many quasars. And then another paper in
36:24
Speaker 1: response that looked at magnesium and there's absorption of magnesium
36:28
Speaker 1: gas there, which is another indicator of like an over
36:31
Speaker 1: dense region. And so I think the consensus right now
36:34
Speaker 1: is that it is a large quasar group. But we
36:37
Speaker 1: still don't understand how you would make something this big
36:41
Speaker 1: this early in the universe. I see, and we have
36:44
Speaker 1: a lot of information about it, right Like you send
36:45
Speaker 1: me a little picture that she was kind of a
36:47
Speaker 1: three D map of all these quasars. Like when you
36:50
Speaker 1: look out there into space and you look it towards
36:52
Speaker 1: this huge and large cluster, can you actually like tell
36:55
Speaker 1: individual quasars apart? Yeah, you can map these individual quasars.
36:58
Speaker 1: They are really really bright. Now they're really far away,
37:02
Speaker 1: but they're so breath that you can identify them. That
37:04
Speaker 1: that's how they were discovered in the first place. You know,
37:07
Speaker 1: they're embedded in many, many other galaxies which are too
37:11
Speaker 1: faint for us to see sometimes at least without dedicated viewing.
37:15
Speaker 1: So we can spot these things because there are like
37:17
Speaker 1: extraordinarily bright lights really really far away, and you can
37:21
Speaker 1: definitely resolve individual ones. And yeah, they've made this three
37:24
Speaker 1: D map of them, Like what does it look like?
37:26
Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to look at this structure and understand,
37:29
Speaker 1: you know, why is it formed this way not that way?
37:32
Speaker 1: Is there any pattern in there? Right? Yeah? But generally,
37:34
Speaker 1: are people pretty sure it's a cluster or what's the
37:37
Speaker 1: prevalent thinking about it? Is it a random coincidence or
37:40
Speaker 1: is there an actual you know, structure that was there
37:43
Speaker 1: from the beginning of time. It's hard to say. You know,
37:45
Speaker 1: the experimental evidence I think is pretty strong that it's there,
37:49
Speaker 1: and then it's a thing. I think that most astronomers
37:51
Speaker 1: believe that it is a group, but that requires something new,
37:56
Speaker 1: that requires some explanation for how you get something this big.
37:59
Speaker 1: How do you make a building that's from Kansas to California?
38:03
Speaker 1: How do you explain this in the existence of this
38:05
Speaker 1: string of diamonds in the sky. We can't explain why
38:09
Speaker 1: it's there, but we think that it is there, and
38:12
Speaker 1: so that's exciting because it tells us that something could
38:14
Speaker 1: be going on in the early universe that we don't understand.
38:18
Speaker 1: I see, it's a huge mystery, or at least a
38:21
Speaker 1: very large one. It's a huge, large mystery, you know.
38:25
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing where maybe there's some new
38:27
Speaker 1: physics that explains how things that are so far away
38:30
Speaker 1: from each other in the universe that they didn't have
38:32
Speaker 1: time for light to get between them could somehow be connected.
38:36
Speaker 1: I could somehow how a correlation between them. So it's
38:39
Speaker 1: an opportunity for people to sort of go crazy and
38:42
Speaker 1: think about new ideas to potentially explain the way the
38:45
Speaker 1: universe was formed and the way it expanded in its
38:47
Speaker 1: early days. Because I guess it's crazy if it's four
38:50
Speaker 1: billion light years across, like for one of them to
38:53
Speaker 1: talk to the other one at least gravitationally or through
38:56
Speaker 1: light or anything. I mean that's all already like a
38:58
Speaker 1: third of the life of the universe exactly. And now
39:01
Speaker 1: we're talking about like forming a structure. You know that
39:03
Speaker 1: requires a lot of back and forth his paperwork. You know,
39:06
Speaker 1: these meetings. You can't just get together and call yourself
39:09
Speaker 1: a large quazer group or a huge one by that matter. Yeah,
39:13
Speaker 1: I have to say I'm a little bit skeptical. I'm like,
39:14
Speaker 1: so many three quasars. I mean I was already kind
39:16
Speaker 1: of used to forty twenty so many threat And if
39:20
Speaker 1: I would qualify it that as huge, what do you think,
39:23
Speaker 1: like maybe very large or extra large, but huge, Like,
39:27
Speaker 1: you know, what if you find a thousand, Now, what
39:29
Speaker 1: do you call that one the Nega large quasar group.
39:32
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you had to be impressed.
39:34
Speaker 1: We need another digit on that, at least something in
39:36
Speaker 1: the triple digits to earn the huge monitor exactly. Well,
39:41
Speaker 1: that's the huge large Quazer group. Another sign that there
39:44
Speaker 1: are still big mysteries out there, and not just big mysteries.
39:47
Speaker 1: Huge mysteries out there in the universe, huge structures, huge
39:51
Speaker 1: objects that we really are still discovering what they're about
39:54
Speaker 1: and what's causing them. That's right, and we are just
39:56
Speaker 1: beginning to explore our universe. We are only gathering at
40:00
Speaker 1: high any fraction of the light that carries with it
40:02
Speaker 1: evidence for how the universe was made and how it
40:05
Speaker 1: looks now. Most of that is being ignored, unless you're
40:08
Speaker 1: counting the plants. And so I hope that as a species,
40:11
Speaker 1: we can build more and more of these eyeballs that
40:13
Speaker 1: let us look deep into the distant universe and map
40:16
Speaker 1: out the structure of our neighborhood and our region and
40:19
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe, and learned from that how
40:21
Speaker 1: our universe came to me and maybe something about its future.
40:25
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I guess we should keep looking out.
40:27
Speaker 1: Maybe we will find bigger ones, or maybe we will
40:29
Speaker 1: sort of unlock what this huge structure means and what
40:33
Speaker 1: it can tell us about how everything begain And maybe
40:36
Speaker 1: this time we should be prepared for finding something big,
40:39
Speaker 1: so we come up with a better name for it. Yeah,
40:41
Speaker 1: we should have started with small, like the small quator group,
40:44
Speaker 1: Like if you discover four them together, I don't know
40:47
Speaker 1: you've called it a large one. I guess that's why
40:50
Speaker 1: the English language has so many words. You can with
40:54
Speaker 1: bigger adjectives. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that.
40:57
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, see you next time. Thanks for listening,
41:08
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
41:11
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from
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