The charge of the light brigade

Abstract

It is now widely believed that, as well as accreting gas through a disk, the majority of quasars simultaneously expel gas with speeds as high as one-tenth the speed of light. However, the origin and dynamics of this gas remain a mystery. This month, writing in the Astrophysical Journal, Murray et al. have proposed a boldly original theory of gas flow in quasars that challenges some of the standard assumptions made in modelling quasars and is likely to provoke a strong observational and theoretical response.

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