NEW: Black holes
Farthest monster black hole found.
Astronomers have discovered the most distant "supermassive" black hole known to science. The black hole is a whopping 13 billion light-years away, so far that we see it as it was a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang.
It has about 800 million times the mass of our Sun, it managed to grow to a surprisingly large size in just a short time after the origin of the Universe. The newly discovered black hole is busily devouring material at the centre of a galaxy - marking it out as a so-called quasar.
Matter, such as gas, falling onto the black hole will form an ultra-hot mass of material orbiting around it.
"Quasars are among the brightest and most distant known celestial objects and are crucial to understanding the early Universe," said Bram Venemans of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
This quasar is interesting because it comes from a time when the Universe was just 5% of its current age. At this time, the cosmos was beginning to emerge from a period known as the dark ages - just before the first stars appeared.
"Gathering all this mass in under 690 million years is an enormous challenge for theories of supermassive black hole growth," said Eduardo Bañados, from the Carnegie Institution for Science.
Prior to this discovery, the record-holder for the furthest known quasar existed when the Universe was about 800 million years old. The discovery of a massive black hole so early on may provide key clues on conditions that abounded when the Universe was young.
"This finding shows that a process obviously existed in the early Universe to make this monster," Dr Bañados explained.
"What that process is? Well, that will keep theorists very busy."
Astronomers have discovered the most distant "supermassive" black hole known to science. The black hole is a whopping 13 billion light-years away, so far that we see it as it was a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang.
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