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Farthest monster black hole found
Astronomers have discovered the most distant "supermassive" black hole known to science.
The matter-munching sinkhole is a whopping 13 billion light-years away, so far that we see it as it was a mere 690 million years after the Big Bang. But at about 800 million times the mass of our Sun, it managed to grow to a surprisingly large size such a short time after the origin of the Universe. The find is described in the journal Nature [DOI: 10.1038/nature25180] [DX].
This relic from the early Universe is busily devouring material at the centre of a galaxy - marking it out as a so-called quasar.
Also at Sky & Telescope.
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Most Distant (and Oldest) Supermassive Black Hole Discovered
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift.
-- Shelley
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @09:19PM (1 child)
what, has it done something strange lately?
-zug
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2017, @11:57PM
It just sits there, in the night sky, mocking and mooning at me! It is quite enough to make one go mad! All those craters, you see, are not the result of impacts, but are the remnants of gigantic electrical discharges, which proves that the entire gravitational basis of Newtonian physics, not to mention Einstein, is completely wrong!! They laughed at me at the Royal Society when I proved to them that my theories are sound! Now I am going to fly a steam rocket, up to the mothership, where an obvious rebuttal probe awaits me. Told ya! Big Bang=no moon!!!