* Astronomy

Discovery of earliest known black holes announced by astronomers

Astronomers have discovered what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. The discovery, based on observations with the NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and other space observatories, will be published in the March 18 edition of the scientific journal Nature.
Black holes are beastly distortions of space and time. The most massive and active ones lurk at the cores of galaxies, and are usually surrounded by doughnut-shaped structures of dust and gas that feed and sustain the growing black holes. These hungry supermassive black holes are called quasars.
The very early universe didn't have any dust, so the most primitive quasars also should be dust-free. But nobody had seen such pristine quasars -- until now, when the Spitzer telescope spied two of them about 13 billion light-years away. The findings will help astronomers understand the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars all came to be.

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