Universe's oldest quasars found, baffling astronomers with early supermassive black holes

Astronomers have discovered the two oldest known quasars, dating to less than 700 million years after the Big Bang, challenging existing theories of cosmic evolution. The findings, made using the Euclid space telescope, reveal that supermassive black holes existed much earlier in the universe than previously thought.

The research, conducted by a team from Leiden University and published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, identified 31 quasars from the early universe. Among these, two are the most ancient ever recorded, pushing back the timeline of known quasars by approximately 20 million years from the previous record set in 2021.

Quasars are extremely bright celestial bodies powered by matter accreting onto supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. They serve as crucial clues for understanding the early universe. Observing more distant quasars allows scientists to look further back in cosmic history.

"The further we push into the earlier universe, the more difficult this puzzle becomes," said co-author Joseph Hennawi, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The rapid formation of black holes with masses billions of times that of the sun in the early universe remains unexplained by current astrophysical models.

The team is now analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on these newly discovered quasars, hoping to find even older ones and gradually unravel the mystery of how supermassive black holes formed so quickly after the universe began.

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The further we push into the earlier universe, the more difficult this puzzle becomes.