all things Quasar Absorption Lines

In March 1963, quasars were discovered. The complexes of absorption lines in the spectra of these monstrous guzzling black holes revolutionized astronomy and ushered in the modern era of the astronomical sciences. As a quasar's light beam transverses the vast distances across the Universe for billions of years, hundreds of narrow slivers of light are absorbed in intricate patterns by the microscopic gas particles that comprise structures like the cosmic web and galaxies. Using powerful telescopes and spectrographs, we disperse quasar light beams into their rainbows of colors revealing the intricate patterns. Each atom, ion, or molecule has its own "fingerprint" pattern of absorption lines and our job is to analyze these (sometimes overlapping!) fingerprints . What can we learn? The whole history of the Universe is encoded into these quasar absorption lines. This channel, "all things Quasar Absorption Lines," is dedicated to their analysis and the science we learn by analyzing them!