Euclid telescope discovers oldest known quasar in early universe

Astronomers using the Euclid telescope have discovered a collection of 31 quasars powered by black holes in the early universe. The most significant finding is the oldest and most distant quasar ever observed, which emitted light approximately 670 million years after the Big Bang. This quasar shines with the brightness of a trillion suns.

Quasars occur when supermassive black holes are surrounded by rotating accretion disks of matter. As gravity pulls this matter inward, friction causes it to glow intensely, often outshining the entire host galaxy. The discovery of these objects is expected to help scientists understand how black holes grew so rapidly following the Big Bang.

Team leader Daming Yang from Leiden University noted that finding and studying these early quasars addresses one of the largest mysteries in astrophysics: how these massive systems formed and expanded so quickly. The Euclid telescope, launched in 2023, has achieved this result in just one year, whereas previous efforts took a decade to find similar numbers of distant objects.