One of the farthest known quasars seems to have shut down the creation of new stars in all the galaxies within its vicinity.
A quasar is a powerful source of light, created by torrid gas orbiting a gargantuan black hole at the center of a galaxy. The intense radiation from one quasar, named VIK J2348-3054, has probably stopped star formation at least 16 million light-years away from itself, astronomer Trystan Lambert and colleagues report in a paper to appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics.