NexFuture (July 11, 2026) — In a monumental breakthrough for astrophysics, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope has pierced through the cosmic dark ages to reveal 31 previously unknown quasars, fundamentally altering our understanding of the early universe.
 |
| This artist’s concept shows a quasar, which is a galaxy with large quantities of material spiralling into its central supermassive black hole. Extreme gravitational and frictional forces heat the material to millions of degrees, generating more light than all the stars in the galaxy combined. ESA |
Published recently on July 6 in the prestigious journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, this sweeping discovery effectively doubles the number of known quasars from the universe's formative epoch. Among this treasure trove of ancient celestial bodies are two of the oldest and most distant quasars ever observed by humanity, offering unprecedented clues to one of the most persistent and baffling mysteries in modern cosmology: how supermassive black holes managed to grow to such gargantuan proportions just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
To grasp the magnitude of this discovery, it is essential to understand the sheer, terrifying power of a quasar. These entities are essentially the hyper-active, brilliantly luminous hearts of early galaxies. They are powered by actively feeding supermassive black holes that are rapidly consuming vast, swirling accretion disks of cosmic gas and primordial dust.
As this raw material is violently dragged into the black hole's gravitational well, immense friction and gravitational forces heat the matter to unimaginable temperatures. This process releases a torrential outpouring of electromagnetic radiation, allowing a single quasar to entirely outshine the combined light of every star in its host galaxy. According to the research team, the two oldest quasars identified in this new batch are radiating with a blinding luminosity equivalent to roughly one trillion of our Suns, acting as brilliant cosmic lighthouses transmitting data across the expanse of space and time.
Because light takes time to travel across the universe, looking deep into space is effectively looking back in time. Astronomers measure this distance using "redshift"—the degree to which the light from a receding object has been stretched into longer, redder wavelengths by the expansion of the universe. Of the 31 newly discovered quasars, an impressive 12 exhibit a redshift of 7 or higher.
This signifies that their light has been traveling through the cosmos for over 13 billion years, meaning we are seeing these objects exactly as they existed during the first 770 million years of the universe. Most astonishingly, the two record-breaking quasars boast redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69. These incredibly distant objects flared into existence when the universe was merely 670 million years old—a fleeting moment representing only about 5% of its current age of 13.8 billion years.
Finding these ancient behemoths is a game-changer for theoretical physics. Daming Yang, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the lead author of the groundbreaking study, explained that uncovering quasars with such extreme age and mass is the key to decoding the infancy of the cosmos.
Traditionally, the rapid growth of early black holes defies conventional physics; according to the Eddington limit, the outward pressure of a quasar's intense radiation should blow away the surrounding gas, starving the black hole and capping its growth rate. Yet, these early supermassive black holes exist, suggesting exotic early-universe dynamics, such as the direct collapse of massive primordial gas clouds. Antonio La Marca, an ESA researcher and core member of the Euclid team, noted that this discovery is a crucial, foundational step in understanding the true nature and formation mechanisms of these extraordinary objects, moving scientists away from theoretical models and toward hard, observational data.
Historically, hunting for ancient quasars has been an incredibly arduous task. They are exceptionally rare, and due to their extreme distance, they appear incredibly faint to Earth-based observers. Previous telescopic surveys were inherently biased, only capable of detecting the absolute brightest, most extreme outliers in the early universe, leaving the broader population of early black holes completely hidden in the dark.
This is precisely where the Euclid telescope changes the paradigm. Armed with an exceptionally wide field of view and highly sensitive instruments capable of observing in both visible and near-infrared light, Euclid can scour massive swaths of the sky with unprecedented precision. It has the unique ability to detect the much fainter, more "average" quasars that older telescopes simply missed, providing a far more accurate and comprehensive census of the early cosmic landscape.
Remarkably, these 31 ancient quasars merely represent the opening act of Euclid's ambitious scientific mission. Over its planned six-year operational lifespan, the state-of-the-art telescope is tasked with surveying more than one-third of the entire celestial sphere to construct the largest, most detailed 3D map of the universe ever created.
Astronomers globally are confident that as the mission progresses, Euclid will uncover hundreds more of these primordial quasars, mapping the intricate evolutionary pathways of the universe's very first galaxies. Furthermore, Euclid's gaze is not solely fixed on the distant past; it is simultaneously revolutionizing our understanding of our own cosmic backyard.
Just weeks prior to this quasar announcement, the telescope delivered a breathtaking, razor-sharp image capturing over 60 million individual stars densely packed within the central core of our own Milky Way, proving that Euclid is poised to unravel the universe's deepest secrets across all scales of space and time.
Community Insights