When the universe was one-third its current age, distant cosmic phenomena called quasars spewed light in all directions.

Today, that light has made it to Earth—and cosmologists that are studying it to understand how the universe makes order out of chaos.

A quasar is a compact region that surrounds a supermassive black hole in the center of a large galaxy. While scientists suspect that most large galaxies have quasars, not all of them are active. The distinction between active and inactive has to do with angular momentum: if the matter surrounding the black hole has some angular momentum, then it will avoid falling directly into the black hole and will instead collect into what’s known as an “accretion disc” around the circumference. The accretion disc is what causes quasars’ intense luminosity and high energy output. A quasar can also be activated if galaxies merge and the black hole gets a new supply of matter.

While galaxies all have nuclei—active quasars or not—galaxies themselves are not evenly distributed throughout the universe, even across distances spanning billions of light-years. Instead, galaxies form cosmic “webs” that weave around huge chambers of darkness. Shimmering filaments thread galaxies together, and brighter parts of those filaments are home to large galaxy clusters. Previous studies have shown that galaxies seem to spin on axes parallel to whatever filament hosts them. That discovery alone was surprising enough to scientists. But a new study assessing quasar alignment takes this “spooky” effect even further.