近日，天文学家发现了迄今为止已知最遥远的“超大”黑洞。这个大量吞噬其周围物质的黑洞离地球的距离为130亿光年。

Scientists used telescopes in Chile and Hawaii and an orbiting NASA probe to detect a black hole 13 billion light years away from Earth at the centre of a huge luminous object known as a quasar.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science say light detected from the quasar dates back to only 690 million years after the Big Bang when the Universe was emerging from a period known as the Dark Ages.

Writing in the journal Nature, they say the age and sheer size of the black hole – about 800 million times the mass of our Sun – challenges current notions about the formation of these black holes and the Universe itself.