More space news and info at: http://www.coconutsciencelab.com - scientists have found that the rotation axes of the central super-massive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years.
They have 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.
Quasars are galaxies with very active super-massive black holes at their centers. These black holes are surrounded by spinning discs of extremely hot material that is often spewed out in long jets along their axes of rotation. Quasars can shine more brightly than all the stars in the rest of their host galaxies put together.
When looking at the distribution of galaxies on scales of billions of light-years, scientists find that they are not evenly distributed. They form a cosmic web of filaments and clumps around huge voids where galaxies are scarce. This arrangement of material is known as "large-scale structure."
The above video is an artist's impression illustrating the mysterious alignments between the spin axes of quasars and the large-scale structures that they inhabit that observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed.
These alignments are over billions of light-years and are the largest known in the universe. The video does not depict the distribution of real galaxies or quasars.
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Credit: ESO, M. Kornmesser
