Tau.Neutrino said:
Astronomers watch six galaxies suddenly fire up into quasars
Normally things happen slowly out in space. It can take thousands, millions or even billions of years for stars and galaxies to evolve. But now astronomers have spotted an event that was thought to happen over millennia play out in a matter of months, as a usually-quiet galaxy suddenly fired up into an energetic quasar – and not just once, but in six different cases.
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Great article. Thanks for the link.
> The galaxies in question started off in a class known as low-ionization nuclear emission line region (LINER) galaxies. Accounting for about a third of the galaxies in our neighborhood, these LINERs are characterized by mild activity in their center (or nucleus) – more than you’d see in a galaxy like the Milky Way, but far less than a blazing quasar.
> Existing theory says that quasars should take thousands of years to fire up, but now, astronomers have witnessed it happening live, right before their eyes. And it wasn’t just a one-off event either – six different LINER galaxies were seen to suddenly roar into quasars, within the first nine months of observations by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).
> found it was a previously dormant black hole undergoing a transition that astronomers call a ‘changing look,’
Need to find out more about what “changing look” is. Is it … no, I don’t know.