StringJunky Posted November 20, 2014 Posted November 20, 2014 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....Read More>>> Arxiv: Alignment of quasar polarizations with large-scale structures 3
barfbag Posted November 20, 2014 Posted November 20, 2014 Thanks for posting. It is interesting read. Things that make you go Hmmm. 1
StringJunky Posted November 20, 2014 Author Posted November 20, 2014 Thanks for posting. It is interesting read. Things that make you go Hmmm. Exactly my thoughts. It's nice when something as big and complex as the universe has some linearity in it to focus on.
pantheory Posted December 12, 2014 Posted December 12, 2014 (edited) I think this discovery could be related to predictions of Halton Arp concerning some quasars being spin-offs from a parent quasar. In some cases Arp, and others, believed that the linear alignment of quasars with different redshifts all came from a seemingly obvious parent quasar and galaxy, which appear to have emerged from a parent galaxy. If this is a valid interpretation, then in time galaxies could develop surrounding the quasars and all spin-offs could be in spin alignment with each other and an alleged parent galaxy. This interpretation was and is very controversial because the redshifts of the aligned quasars completely diverge greatly from each other. With this interpretation the redshift of quasars could not be an indications of their distances from us. Most astronomers and theorists then and now believe such alignments observed by Arp and others, are only perspective alignments and that the quasars are instead millions or billions of light years from each other and do not emerge from a parent. But this standard interpretation leaves no explanation for such spin alignments of quasars over great distances as is being observed based upon this study. Edited December 12, 2014 by pantheory
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