Scientists can now estimate when stars first began to light up the cosmic universe, thanks to the discovery of a supermassive black hole, NPR reports.
The black hole is 800 million times larger than our sun, nestled inside a bright object called a quasar, which is an emanating light that took 13 billion years to reach Earth. The black hole formed only 690 million years after the Big Bang — aka, when the universe was just 5 percent of its current age, NPR writes.
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A team led by Carnegie Observatories' Eduardo Banados published the discovery Wednesday in the journal Nature. One scientist compared the team's discovery to finding a needle in a haystack — a very large and old haystack.
Read more about the study at Nature.
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