Scientists have discovered the most distant radio burst ever recorded. The burst came from a quasar so far away that its light took 13 billion years to reach Earth. This means the signals detected by scientists come from a time when the universe was just 780 million years old.
More distant quasars have been detected in the past, but the new one is notable because it is the first time that radio emissions have been detected from such a distant object.
Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe. They are located at the centers of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes.
A small minority of quasars are "radio-loud," or have jets that emit radio emissions. Only 10% of quasars fall into this category, but they are particularly useful to scientists because they are extremely bright.
Even as scientists have continued to find vast numbers of objects from the first billion years of the universe, particularly in the last decade, finding those that have sent out radio signals has proven much more difficult.
The quasar, called P172+18, is also powered by one of the hungriest black holes ever seen. The supermassive black hole is about 300 million times more massive than the Sun and is consuming material so rapidly that it is among the fastest growing ever observed.
Scientists were able to inspect the quasar in detail using the Magellan telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. After detecting the radio burst, they were able to identify it as coming from a distant quasar.
Further research allowed scientists to further study the quasar and the black hole, including the latter's enormous and rapidly growing mass.
Scientists continue to discover other such quasars even deeper into the universe.
The paper describing the finding is titled "The discovery of a highly accreting, radio-loud quasar at z=6.82" and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Source of information: independent.co.uk
