BBC Radio 4 Extra

Cosmic Quest

Cosmic Quest: Episode 23: A Violent Universe

Factual: History

Factual: Science & Nature

Episode 23

Episode 23: A Violent Universe

A Violent Universe

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Cosmic Quest, A Violent Universe

Heather Couper looks at the discovery of quasars - huge black holes a long way from Earth.

Astronomer Heather Couper looks at the discovery of quasars - huge black holes a long way from Earth. From June 2008.

Heather Couper presents a narrative history of astronomy.

Only in the last 50 years have telescopes been powerful enough to study distant galaxies beyond our Milky Way in much detail. Cygnus A first came to astronomers' attention as a radio source, the second strongest in the sky. Optical astronomers later realised that it was a pair of galaxies colliding with one another. It is a colossal 700 million light years away, making its radio output a million times more powerful than that of our Milky Way. Energetic reactions were taking place in its core, shooting out great jets of high energy particles emitting radio waves.

The next breakthrough came from an even more distant object over 2 billion light years away. At its heart was something 40 times more luminous than a normal galaxy yet no bigger than the solar system. These mysterious powerhouses were named quasi-stellar radio sources, now abbreviated to quasars. The consensus now is that they are massive black holes, millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun, gobbling stars and gas in the centres of galaxies.

Readers are Timothy West, Robin Sebastian, Julian Rhind-Tutt and John Palmer.

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Heather Couper presents a narrative history of astronomy

Astronomer Heather Couper charts the history of our growing understanding of the universe and progress of astronomy.

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