Three Distant Quasars Found at Edge of the Universe
Astronomers have discovered three of the oldest, most distant quasars yet found — quasars close to the Big Bang that began the universe. Xiaohui Fan of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory in Tucson, Ariz., will present the results at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Seattle. Fan, leader of the team that discovered the objects, explained that these distant quasars — compact but luminous objects thought to be powered by super-massive black holes — reach back to a time when the universe was just 800 million years old. The highest redshift quasar is roughly 13 billion light years away and was discovered recently in the constellation Ursa Major.