Scientists discover the universe’s most distant supermassive black hole

Credit: Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science(NEW YORK) — Scientists have discovered the farthest known supermassive blackhole, believed to have been created just 690 million years after the Big Bang.

The black hole is about 800 million times the mass of our Sun. Co-author of the study, Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said that it “grew far larger than we expected in only 690 million years after the Big Bang, which challenges our theories about how black holes form.”

The newly found black hole sits at the center of a galaxy, drawing its contents inward, in what scientists call a quasar. Scientists believe it can provide information from when the universe was just five percent of its current age.

Experts believe there could be 20 to 100 quasars as bright and as distant as this one.

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