Astronomers find oldest known quasars that defy current theories

Astronomers have spotted oldest known ever discovered quasars through the Euclid space telescope that defy current theories related to space and universe, thereby deepening astronomical mystery.

Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe fueled by supermassive black holes located at the centers of early galaxies. They generate massive amounts of energy, even trillions of times brighter than the Sun, when they consume surrounding matter.

The cosmic giants hold a key to unravel mysteries related to the infancy of the Universe, as per researchers’ observations.

In a recent research study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Monday, an international team announced the discovery of 31 quasars. Among 31, two are the oldest ones ever observed yet. These oldest ones generated the light, dating back to the time when the universe was roughly 670 million years old.

The recent discovery surpassed the team’s previous record who found the oldest one in 2021 by around 20 million years.

The collection of these ancient quasars dated back to the epoch of reionization, dubbing it as a transformative era marked by the first emergence of stars and galaxies. The emergence ended the universe’s cosmic dark ages.

"We can use quasars as a lighthouse to study the gas between us and them, so that we can trace how the universe was reionised through this cosmic history," Daming Yang, the lead author, said.

These new findings not only give insight into the existence of the early universe but also challenged the existing current models, as telescope technology advances.

Study co-author Joseph Hennawi said in a statement, “These monsters -- weighing billions of times the mass of our Sun -- somehow already existed when the universe was in its infancy.”

“We don't yet have a good understanding of how they grew so massive, so fast.”