J0313–1806

J0313–1806 is a quasar that is considered the most distant and oldest known quasar in the universe. It is located at a distance of approximately 13.03 billion light-years from Earth, and its light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach us. This means we are observing it as it was when the universe was just 670 million years old, or about 5% of its current age.

Discovery

The discovery of J0313–1806 was announced in January 2021 by a team of astronomers led by Feige Wang of the University of Arizona. The team used several telescopes, including the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, to identify and study the quasar.

Characteristics

J0313–1806 is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 1.6 billion times that of the Sun. This makes it the earliest known example of such a black hole. The quasar is also surrounded by a gaseous accretion disk that is heated to extremely high temperatures by the intense gravitational energy, causing it to glow and making the quasar visible from Earth.

Significance

The existence of J0313–1806 challenges current theories about the formation and growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe. According to these theories, black holes grow by accreting surrounding material and by merging with other black holes. However, the high mass of the black hole in J0313–1806 suggests that it must have grown at an unusually high rate from its initial 'seed', or that a new, currently unknown, mechanism was involved in its formation.

See also

• List of quasars
• Supermassive black hole
• Accretion disk