In the early universe, however, the surrounding environment was hotter because of the proximity of photons from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the oldest detectable light in the universe, which permeated this ancient era. Radio jets observed in later epochs are generated by the interactions of electrons within the jets with the strong magnetic field of the quasar: the electrons cool down due to contact with this field, a process that emits radio waves. The reason why these radio-bright quasars are so unusual is not yet fully understood, but it could be related to the exotic environment that characterized the early universe. For this reason, radio-loud quasars could provide a special observational model of this enigmatic process in action. One explanation posits that radio quasar jets, like those seen at P172+18, agitate the gassy disk in the galactic core, accelerating the rate at which the black hole devours material and grows. Scientists have long been puzzled by the fact that these gargantuan objects exist so early in the universe, because models suggest it should take much longer for such massive monsters to evolve. These features are created by the extreme interactions between the gravitational forces of the huge black holes and the gassy material that falls into them. Despite the remoteness of these objects in space and time, they are often observable thanks to bright disks of superheated gas that surround the supermassive black holes at the galactic cores, as well as twin jets of material that shoot out of their poles at relativistic speeds. Quasars are the powerful and luminous nuclei of enormous galaxies that were plentiful in the first few billion years of the universe. “But only 10 percent of quasars show strong radio emission so those objects are even rarer.” “Finding quasars at these early epochs is already like finding a needle in a haystack,” Bañados explained. While it is not the most distant quasar ever observed-that honor goes to J0313- 1806, which appears about 100 million years earlier in time-it is the farthest quasar that shows a strong radio signal. P172+18 is part of an extremely rare group of radio-loud quasars that exist at the edge of space and time.
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