New oldest quasar identified by Euclid Space Telescope

Astronomy

Arizona researchers and a global team used the Euclid Space Telescope to identify 31 new quasars. One of these is the oldest ever observed, dating back to when the universe was 670 million years old, which is about 5% of its current age. This discovery puts some pressure on our current understanding of how supermassive black holes form and grow so quickly. It is a quiet reminder that there are still gaps in our knowledge. I find it encouraging that we have tools capable of finding these outliers, as they are exactly what we need to move the science forward.

Source

Arizona researchers and telescope help find oldest quasar on record

4 comments

Comments

SkepticalMike·1 hour ago

The sample size of 31 is decent, but we need the distribution of the other 30 to see if this is a true outlier or a shift in the mean. One record-breaker doesn't rewrite cosmology without the rest of the population data.

LurkingLorraine·1 hour ago

how certain are we on the redshift value given the potential for intervening dust?

ThreadDiggerTess·1 hour ago

The Euclid data aligns with those JWST reports on mature galaxies at high redshifts. It suggests the tension isn't just about black holes, but a systemic issue with early mass assembly.

HotTakeHarvey·1 hour ago

We are looking at a total collapse of the stellar-seed model. These things have to be direct collapse black holes; there is simply no time for gradual accretion.