Astronomers have spotted two active black holes merging at their farthest distance ever — just 900 million years after the Big Bang.
"The existence of merging quasars in the Epoch of Reionization has been anticipated for a long time." study lead author Yoshiki Matsuoka, an astronomer at Ehime University in Japan, said in a statement. “It has now been confirmed for the first time.”Black holes are born from the collapse of giant stars and grow by ceaselessly gorging on gas, dust, stars and other other black holes in the star-forming galaxies that contain them.
By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.Because light travels at a fixed speed through the vacuum of space, the deeper scientists look into the universe, the more remote light they intercept and the further back in time they see. Roughly 300 quasars have been previously found in the Epoch of Reionization, but these recently discovered quasars are the first to be discovered in a pair. The researchers found them using the Subaru Telescope's Hyper Suprime-Cam, in which they appeared as two faint red smudges among a sparkling backdrop of galaxies and stars.