Astronomers, using three telescopes based in the US State of Hawaii, have discovered the second-oldest, or second most distant, quasar so far found in the universe. Quasars are the most energetic objects known in the universe and are powered by supermassive black holes in their centres. And the supermassive black hole in the centre of the newly discovered quasar is twice the size of the one in the most distant (or oldest) quasar yet found, which is the only other one currently known in that era. The quasar has been given a Hawaiian name, Poniua’ena, which means “unseen spinning source of creation, surrounded in brilliance”. It has been calculated to have a cosmological redshift of more than 7.5. This indicates that the light from Poniua’ena left the quasar only 700-million years after the Big Bang, and took more than 13-billion years to reach us.
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