The Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole Ever Discovered
Scientists searching for astronomical objects in the early universe, not long after the Big Bang, have made a record-breaking, two-for-one discovery.
Using ground-based telescopes, a team of astronomers have discovered the most distant supermassive black hole ever found. The black hole has a mass 800 million times greater than our sun, which earns it the “supermassive” classification reserved for giants like this. Astronomers can’t see the black hole, but they know it’s there because they can see something else: A flood of light around the black hole that can outshine an entire galaxy. This is called a quasar, and this particular quasar is the most distant one ever observed.
The light from the quasar took more than 13 billion years to reach Earth, showing us a picture of
