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Findings by University of Cape Town, University of Western Cape offer glimpse of early universe to be revealed when SKA is operational

By Alexis Haden - April 11, 2016

Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction – most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe, a new paper in MNRAS reports today.

The new result is the discovery – for the first time – of an alignment of the jets of radio galaxies over a large volume of space, a finding made possible by a three-year deep radio imaging survey of the radio waves coming from a region called ELAIS-N1 using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT).

The radio jets are produced by the supermassive black holes at the centres of these galaxies, and the only way for this alignment to exist is if supermassive black holes are all spinning in the same direction, says Prof Andrew Russ Taylor, joint UWC/UCT SKA Chair, Director of the recently-launched Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and principal-author of the study.

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