New discovery of earliest black holes.

PositionAstronomy

Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. The discovery, based largely on observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, should provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies, and stars all came to be. "We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," declares Linhua Jiang, research associate at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, Tucson.

Black holes are beastly distortions of space and time. The most active and massive ones lurk at the cores of galaxies and usually are surrounded by donut-shaped structures of dust and gas that feed and sustain them. These hungry supermassive black holes are called quasars.

As grimy and unkempt as our present-day universe is, scientists believe the very early universe did not have any dust--which tells them that the most primitive quasars also should be dust-free. Yet, nobody had seen such pristine quasars--until now. Spitzer has identified two such immaculate...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT