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Health & Science2h 29m ago

Astronomers have discovered the earliest known flickering quasar, J0439+1634, whose light has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us.

not specified

Who
Astronomers, Anna-Christina Eilers, Gene Leung
What
Astronomers have discovered the earliest known flickering quasar, J0439+1634, whose light has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us.
When
Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:03:28 GMT · 2h 29m ago
Where
not specified ·
Why
This quasar's flickering can help reveal how some of the Universe's biggest black holes grew so unexpectedly monstrous so early in cosmic history.
The Frontline Impact

How this affects you

The discovery of J0439+1634 provides direct evidence that the same feeding processes and structures observed in the nearby Universe were already in place at very early times, which offers new methods for measuring the mass of some of the oldest quasars and constraining the size of black hole seeds.

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