The Euclid space telescope has discovered 31 ancient quasars, including the two earliest known to science. These objects existed when the age of the Universe was only about 5% of its current age and help scientists understand how the first galaxies and supermassive black holes emerged.
The Euclid space telescope, operating under the guidance of the European Space Agency (ESA) with the participation of NASA, has discovered 31 of the most ancient known quasars. The results of the study have been published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Quasars are extremely bright objects that form around supermassive black holes. When huge amounts of gas and dust rapidly fall into a black hole, the material heats up to millions of degrees and begins to emit colossal amounts of energy, making quasars visible even at vast distances.
Detecting such ancient quasars is extremely challenging. Due to their immense distance, their light is very faint, and the objects themselves are difficult to distinguish from ordinary stars.
Among the discovered objects, 12 existed within the first 770 million years after the Big Bang. Two quasars turned out to be the most ancient ever detected: they formed about 670 million years after the birth of the Universe, when its age was only about 5% of its current age.
The light from these objects has been traveling to Earth for about 13 billion years, so astronomers are effectively observing the Universe as it was shortly after its inception.
Researchers hope that studying these quasars will help better understand how the first galaxies formed and when the supermassive black holes that exist today in the centers of most large galaxies appeared.
The main goal of the Euclid mission is to create a detailed map of billions of galaxies and help scientists understand the nature of dark energy, which is believed to be causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe.
The data obtained will also be used in preparation for NASA's future space mission — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will continue research on dark energy and the evolution of the Universe.
This discovery shows that even nearly 14 billion years after the Big Bang, scientists continue to find objects that can change our understanding of the early history of the Universe.
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