Just 670 million years after the Big Bang, a quasar with a monstrous black hole dominated a growing galaxy.

A quasar has been discovered in a dark corner of space over 13.03 billion light-years away, and it contains a supermassive black hole 1.6 billion times more massive than the sun at its heart. .

At such a distance, J0313-1806 becomes the record holder for earliest black hole, dethroning the previous champion, J1342+0928, which was discovered in 2017 and existed when the universe was only 690 million years old. .

They lie at the center of galaxies, but at their own center lies a supermassive black hole, millions to billions of times more massive than the sun.

The observations enabled researchers to confirm the distance with high precision and examine some of the properties of the supermassive black hole at the quasar's center.

Because the black hole can not be older than 670 million years, traditional theories of black hole growth can't account for its size in such a short period of time.

A previous version of this article stated the black hole is only 670 million years old