Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃) . Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this episode of Space Time. Try a 30 day trial of The Great Course Plus at http://ow.ly/m8ms306GoxP. Quasars ... the most metal thing in the universe. Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Get your own Space Time t­shirt at http://bit.ly/1QlzoBi Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Facebook: facebook.com/pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/pbsspacetime Help translate our videos! null When Quasars were first discovered the amount of light pouring out of such a tiny dot in space seemed impossible. A hysterical flurry of hypothesizing followed: swarms of neutron stars, alien civilizations harnessing their entire galaxy’s power, bright, fast-moving objects being ejected by our own galaxy’s core. But by the 1980’s we were converging on the most awesome explanation. It goes a little like this: Take a black hole of millions to billions times the mass of the sun. Where from? It turns out every decent-sized galaxy has one at its core. Now drive gas into the galactic core. One way this can happen is when galaxies merge and grow. That gas descends into the waiting black hole’s gravitational well and gains incredible speed on the way. It is swept up in a raging whirlpool around the black hole that we call an accretion disk, where its energy of motion is turned into heat. The heat-glow of the accretion disk is so bright that we can see quasars to the ends of the universe. Previous Episode: The Phantom Singularity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7EvLhOK08 Written and hosted by Matt O’Dowd Produced by Rusty Ward Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Special thanks to our Patreon Big Bang, Quasar and Hypernova Supporters: Big Bang Henry Van Styn David Nicklas Giorgio P. Quasar Jelle Slaets Tambe Barsbay Joel Brinton Luna IT Solutions Hypernova Joe Chuck Zegar Craig Peterson Mahan Kaur Jordan Young Ratfeast Vitaly Kovalenko John Hofmann Thanks to our Patreon Gamma Ray Burst Supporters: Daniel Lyons Avan & Kyan Griggs Bernardo Higuera Jade Bilkey Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell J Rejc Michael Fischer Dylan Merida Amy Jie Anthony Caridi Avi Goldfinger Corey Smeaton John Pettit Shannan Catalano Florian Stinglmayr Yubo Du Benoit Pagé-Guitard Ronny Polonia Nathan Leniz Jessica Fraley Kirk Mathews Loro Lukic Carl P. Corliss Brandon labonte David Crane Greg Weiss David Matteson Marc Lagarde Eric Jackson Will and Sonja Marple