Scientists have discovered the oldest quasar ever seen, and it shines with the light of a trillion suns

Scientists have discovered the oldest quasar ever seen, and it shines with the light of a trillion suns



"These early quasars date back to the universe's infancy."

Using the European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope, astronomers have discovered a treasure trove of 31 black-hole-powered quasars in the early universe. The most impressive of these new discoveries is the most ancient and distant quasar ever seen, shining with the light of a trillion suns just 670 million years after the Big Bang.

Quasars occur when supermassive black holes with masses millions or even billions of times that of the sun are surrounded by swirling disks of matter called accretion disks. As accretion disks gradually feed these central cosmic titans, the immense gravity of the black holes generates intense friction, causing this matter to glow so brightly that their luminosity can exceed the combined light of every star in their host galaxies.

Despite this, quasars can still be difficult to spot at vast cosmic distances, with their light difficult to distinguish from the light of much more proximate stars. Thus, the hunt for the earliest quasars has been on for decades, with scientists hoping that the discovery of these bodies could help explain how supermassive black holes grew so rapidly so shortly after the Big Bang. Launched in 2023, Euclid has fulfilled its promise in its mission to discover early quasars, with this unprecedented haul of 31 of these black hole engines.

"These early quasars date back to the Universe's infancy," team leader Daming Yang of Leiden University in the Netherlands said in a statement. "By finding and studying them, we can better understand how these enormous systems formed and grew so quickly — one of the greatest mysteries in astrophysics."

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https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/scientists-have-discovered-the-oldest-quasar-ever-seen-and-it-shines-with-the-light-of-a-trillion-suns