Distant Quasars Provide Crucial Link In Understanding Earliest Supermassive Black Holes

Among the rarest objects in the universe, high redshift quasars offer clues to the formation of supermassive black holes thought to lie at the heart of every large galaxy. The study found two of the most distant quasars ever observed, with one lying at an approximate cosmological distance equal to when the universe was only 662 million-years-old. These quasars are selected from approximately 3000 square degrees of sky, and spectroscopic follow-up observations were carried out with the Keck, Magellan, and the Large Binocular Telescope observatories. The research highlights the importance of understanding how these massive black holes grew so rapidly to reach a billion solar masses when the universe was only 650 million-years-old.

The study of quasars has come a long way since their first detection in the radio spectrum by a group of astronomers at Cambridge University in the U.K. The researchers knew they appeared as point-like objects, but were very unlikely to be stars, as stars don't emit significantly in the radio spectrum. The late astrophysicist Donald Lynden-Bell realized that quasars were powered by supermassive black holes. The quasars detected in this most recent Euclid survey were selected from approximately 3000 square degrees of sky, and spectroscopic follow-up observations were carried out with the Keck, Magellan, and the Large Binocular Telescope observatories. The authors note that out of 31 new quasars detected during the first year and a half of the European Space Agency’s Euclid Space Telescope’s wide-angle survey, they have found two of the most distant ever observed.

The key thing that astronomers look for is an object that's bright in the infrared but completely absent in the optical because all its light is redshifted to the infrared. The study found that the highest redshift quasar ever detected --- EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 --- lies at an approximate cosmological distance equal to when the cosmos was only 662 million-years-old. The research highlights the importance of understanding how these massive black holes grew so rapidly to reach a billion solar masses when the universe was only 650 million-years-old. The study also notes that the formation of these black holes remains a cosmic puzzle, with the mechanism for their rapid growth still unclear. The research shows that the growth of these black holes is linked to the formation of accretion disks, which convert kinetic energy into heat and light. The study also notes that the detection of these quasars relies on observing their infrared emission while their optical light is redshifted.

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