'Monster' Quasar Is Brightest Object Ever Found

LOS ANGELES — A team of European astronomers, glimpsing back in time to when the universe was just a youngster, says it has detected the most distant and earliest quasar yet.

Light from this brilliant, starlike object took nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth, meaning the quasar existed when the universe was only 770 million years old – a kid by cosmic standards. The discovery ranks as the brightest object ever found.

To scientists' surprise, the black hole powering this quasar was 2 billion times more massive than the sun. How it grew so bulky so early in the universe's history is a mystery. Black holes are known to feed on stars, gas and other matter, but their growth was always thought to be slow.

The discovery was reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Since quasars are so luminous, they guide astronomers studying the conditions of the cosmos following the Big Bang, the explosion believed to have created the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Researchers are constantly trying to outdo one another in their quest to see the universe as an infant. The deeper they peer into space, the further back in time they are looking.

The previous record holder was a quasar that dated to when the universe was 870 million years old.

The new quasar – with the tongue-twisting name ULAS J1120+0641 – was identified in images from a sky survey taken by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope perched near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The discovery was confirmed by other telescopes.

"It's like sifting for gold. You're looking for something shiny," said lead researcher Daniel Mortlock, an astrophysicist at Imperial College in London.

In an editorial accompanying the research, Chris Willott of the Canadian Astronomy Data Center called the quasar a "monster" that could upend current theories about the growth of black holes.

"The existence of this quasar will be giving some theorists sleepless nights," said Willott, who was not part of the discovery team.

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Online:

Nature journal: www.nature.com/nature

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Alicia Chang can be followed at: http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

(This version CORRECTS Corrects long headline to billion.)

Comments

[TheTightwireGuy]

04:52 PM on 07/03/2011

... While this may seem to be a fanciful speculation, starting with such a set of assumptions may produce what forms the basis for scientific testing: a falsifiable hypothesis. I don't have the modeling chops to do so, but some young gun theorists looking to make names for themselves probably do. And from the "bleachers", I'd like to see such ideas proposed and tested.

[TheTightwireGuy]

04:47 PM on 07/03/2011

... Historically, cosmologists have assumed that the Standard Theory model of the photon is sacrosanct. Holding that aspect of the model fixed, the TBBT resulted from the other evidence. Long ago, a "static" model of the universe (such as proposed by Hoyle) was dismissed by the physics community because the the evidence did not support such a model when imposing the constraints of the Standard Theory (e.g. photons do not lose energy traveling through space unless interacting with othe particles).

But what if the model of the photon is relaxed to allow for an interaction with space itself? Perhaps photons traveling through space lose energy in such small increments that this effect is not observable over the short distances used in tests of the Standard Theory model of the photon. And perhaps this lost energy of photons traveling through space provides the source for the repellant "dark energy" that works to counteract the force of gravity and appears to be present throughout all of space,...

[TheTightwireGuy]

04:39 PM on 07/03/2011

... Where am I going with this? This evidence is consistent with the universe being much the same it was 13 billion years ago as it is today, but that our understanding of the means we use to observe the universe all this years ago is lacking in a critical manner to reconcile the APPEARANCE of an expanding universe with a static universe. In other words, our model of the photon (how we view stuff using our various telescopes) could be critically incomplete.

[TheTightwireGuy]

04:22 PM on 07/03/2011

As a once-long ago physics major, I have been a seat-in-the-bleachers critic of The Big Bang Theory (TBBT) for two simple reasons: (1) why would the universe have a beginning in time but possibly no end? And (2) revisions to the simple idea of an expanding universe that comprises the current form of TBBT (e.g. inflation) seem to be "fixes" to havea model that is consistent with Standard Theory. While such interpretations may have math consistency, the physical story they tell seems convoluted. As an adherent to Einstein's notion that physics is about how things physically happen (versus simple mathematically happen), the complicated physical story of TBBT with the weirdly one-sided timeline of the universe seems too complicated for an otherwise elegant universe. And

[liberaldawg]

04:59 PM on 06/30/2011

Brightest object? I'm sure it wasn't Michelle Bachmann.

[ibe1grump]

07:56 PM on 06/30/2011

Nope..but you've proven she's still above you.

[ManwithaParachute]

03:03 PM on 07/25/2011

She was above me last night

[abuckley23]

04:26 PM on 06/30/2011

Couldn't they have just called it 'Bob'? Easy to pronounce, easy to remember...

[anigma47]

04:22 PM on 06/30/2011

The universe is much older than we can ever possibly know,it probably oscillates over and over again and we are 13 billion years into one of these oscillations and it may be just one of billions of universes since nature never makes just one of anything.

[blindsquirl]

04:06 PM on 07/01/2011

Does this mean...I'm NOT unique? (just kidding)

Love your "take" on this discovery.

[TheTightwireGuy]

04:07 PM on 07/03/2011

I agree with you partially. Absent some convoluted "fix" to The Big Bang Theory (TBBT), this evidence IS consistent with a much older universe than predicted by TBBT, but it is not supportive of an oscillating universe (OU). OU was proposed as a way to have both TBBT and a universe that was longer lived than the time limit imposed by TBBT for the observable universe. A mega black holes would not an oscillation as OU postulates that the universe collapses back to a cosmic egg state that supposedly is the energy source of TBBT.

[Fred Enfield]

04:12 PM on 06/30/2011

I'm not sure if black holes are holes. When stars and other objects coalesce to form galaxies, a vortex of intense gravity is created at the center. The black hole ( if there is one ) at the center of the quasar in question didn't necessarily feed on anything as postulated in the article.
It was formed by a massive congregation of objects.

[ThinkCreeps]

04:52 PM on 06/30/2011

Would you care to explain to us exactly what happens in terms of gravitational energy when that `congregation' occurs?

[Fred Enfield]

11:14 AM on 07/01/2011

I'm just speculating. Like everyone else.

[redclaysreturn]

03:54 PM on 06/30/2011

OMG does NPR know something in the universe is brighter than their people?

[glen11555]

03:53 PM on 06/30/2011

My bad!....I misunderstood I thought they said found the most stupid thing---Obama the Clown

[lita m]

07:22 PM on 06/30/2011

... and yet, he is exponentially smarter than you! Go figure....

[ibe1grump]

07:57 PM on 06/30/2011

minority opinion...but an opinion none the less.

[fds]

02:56 AM on 07/01/2011

Huh? This is a news article about the cosmos. Why use petty political attacks here?

[raal246]

03:47 PM on 06/30/2011

Powerfulllack hole??? OMG - thehudzpath of those scientists for using that term!!!

[fishbbtnc]

03:14 PM on 06/30/2011

Those who are ignorant of the creation by God are as ignorant as those who not...

[Ryan Magdangal]

03:17 PM on 06/30/2011

you still believe in fairy tales? wake up!

[jfrizz0424]

09:07 PM on 06/30/2011

Yeah, unfortunatly people still believe in them, hopefully it will phase out in the next 500 years

[bobcornerstone]

03:32 PM on 06/30/2011

WHAT!

[Harrison Meeske]

02:56 PM on 06/30/2011

gee an the mossbacks think it is 6000 years old, someone doesnt know what they are talkingh about.......i wonder who?

[mayabelle1107]

02:59 PM on 06/30/2011

Maybe they believe that something foreign came and made us evolve into what we are today. One thing I've learned in science, never laugh off a theory, you maybe the only one laughing.

[fds]

02:57 AM on 07/01/2011

That's ridiculous and definitely not a theory in any scientific field.

[Gestas]

02:35 PM on 06/30/2011

The Crazy Far Right dreads the advance of science as much as witches do the approach of daylight.

[mfb1975]

02:54 PM on 06/30/2011

This has to do with politics or religion how? Oh, I see...any chance to bash religion...

If the major religions believe God created a "big bang", how does this change anything?

Peace.

[Harrison Meeske]

02:56 PM on 06/30/2011

who cares?

[kumquat800]

02:04 PM on 07/25/2011

Hopefully one day you'll let go of the childish fantasies, take off the rose-tinted glasses and join us in reality.

[ThinkCreeps]

04:53 PM on 06/30/2011

Vampires?

But they're not afraid of witches. They're afraid of you!

[librldem]

02:27 PM on 06/30/2011

This story will not play well in baggerville usa or their megachurches!

[ThinkCreeps]

04:54 PM on 06/30/2011

Tough for bagland and the US taliban.

Reality doesn't go away just because you ignore it.