Scientists from Ehime University in Japan have discovered a pair of merging ancient quasars for the first time, writes The Astrophysical Journal Letters .
Quasars, which are extremely active and superluminous galactic nuclei, are usually found in a solitary state. The unique discovery was made using the Subaru Telescope's Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph and the Gemini North Telescope's Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph.
The pair of quasars entered a merger state "only" one billion years after the Big Bang, during the era of reionization. Quasar mergers are thought to have occurred constantly during this period, but no paired objects have yet been found among the 300 quasars detected at this distance.
The quasars in this pair have a mass of more than 100 million solar masses each. They are connected by a gas bridge, indicating a large-scale merger of two galaxies. The collision process can take millions or even billions of years. Scientists suggest that such phenomena may play a key role in creating the structure of the modern universe due to the ionization of giant clouds of hydrogen.