Lurking in a distant region of space, more than 13 billion light years away, is a luminous "quasar" fueled by a supermassive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than the sun.
That makes it the most distant — meaning the earliest — known quasar.
J0313-1806 is only 20 million light years farther away than its predecessor, but its supermassive black hole is twice as heavy — challenging known theories on the formation of black holes in the early universe. .
"This is the earliest evidence of how a supermassive black hole is affecting its host galaxy around it," lead author Feige Wang said in a statement.
Scientists believe that supermassive black holes swallow a huge amount of matter, such as gas or stars, to form an accretion disk swirling around itself — creating a quasar.
Black holes typically form when a star explodes, dies and collapses, and supermassive black holes grow as black holes merge over time.
The supermassive black hole at the center of J0313-1806 is so large — still growing as it ingests the mass equivalent of about 25 suns each year — it cannot be explained by a number of previous hypotheses.
This quasar is the earliest evidence that quenching may have been happening at very early times."
"These quasars presumably are still in the process of building their supermassive black holes" Fan added
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