Astronomers detect hundreds of blazers

Astronomers have detected more than two hundred blazers throughout the universe by using the data collected by the NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Blazers, a class of supermassive black holes, are among the most energetic objects in the universe and are usually located at the core of huge galaxies. After the black holes “eat” the matter, they release some of the energy in the form of jets which travel at the speed of light. The jets of the blazer class of black holes are special as they are directed at Earth. "Blazars are extremely rare because it's not too often that a supermassive black hole's jet happens to point towards Earth," Science Daily quoted the principal investigator of the research, Francesco Massaro as saying. "We came up with a crazy idea to use WISE's infrared observations, which are typically associated with lower-energy phenomena, to spot high-energy blazars, and it worked better than we hoped," Massaro added. Blazers are hot and glow with gamma rays. They release an infrared signature as the particles in their jets are accelerated to the speed of light. Thus, the researchers used the WISE data to locate weak heat signatures. WISE mapped the entire sky in 2010 and collected more than 2.7 million images that provided scientists with more than 15 trillion bytes of data. The WISE data and images helped scientists to locate more than 1,000 previously discovered blazars as well as 50 new candidates. According to the researchers, the technique they used could lead to the discovery of thousands more blazers if applied to WISE’s full sky catalog. Astronomers believe the new findings will help them further understand the structure of super-fast jets as well as the evolution process of the supermassive black holes in the early universe. The research has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.