| If the quasar results are eventually confirmed, our concepts of space and time are sure to undergo radical transformations. |
| More recently, astrophysicists explained the intraday variability in luminosity as a scintillation in the interstellar medium rather than rapid quasar rotation. |
| The moving cosmic string would have acted as an additional gravitational lens, affecting both quasar images simultaneously. |
| But others, such as the Milky Way, would still have formed a supermassive black hole despite never being a quasar. |
| From this, with the application of a little geometry, the distance to the quasar can be worked out. |
| At those rates, each galaxy could easily have formed the quasar and its black hole power source in just a few hundred million years. |
