In early July 2026, the European Space Agency announced a discovery that provides a rare glimpse into the very first chapters of cosmic history. The Euclid space telescope has identified 31 of the most ancient quasars—luminous galactic cores fueled by supermassive black holes. Two of these objects radiated with the intensity of a trillion Suns when the universe was only about 670 million years old, representing a mere 5% of its current age.
Quasars represent a fleeting but staggeringly bright phase in the evolution of galaxies. At their centers, matter rapidly spirals into a black hole, releasing a colossal amount of energy in the process. Such objects can outshine the combined light of all other stars in their host galaxy by hundreds or even thousands of times. Locating them in the early universe is exceptionally difficult: they are rare, their light is dimmed by vast distances, and they are easily mistaken for stars within our own Milky Way among the countless points of light.
Launched in 2023, the Euclid telescope was specifically designed for missions of this magnitude. By combining a wide-angle view of the sky with extreme sensitivity, it efficiently sweeps across vast reaches of space to capture even relatively faint signals. This capability has allowed researchers to do more than just find record-holders; they have conducted a genuine census of early quasars. Until now, astronomers were aware of only a handful of such objects at these high redshifts (z > 7). In just a few months of operation, Euclid has more than doubled that count.
The most ancient of these discoveries have been designated EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3, with redshifts of 7.77 and 7.69. The light from these objects has traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach us. These quasars emerged during the Epoch of Reionization—a transitional period when the universe evolved from a dark, neutral state to an ionized one under the influence of the first generation of luminous bodies. Studying them helps scientists understand how supermassive black holes and the first large galaxies could have formed so rapidly.
One of these record-breaking quasars has already been subjected to closer scrutiny: it is surrounded by a dusty, gas-rich galaxy teeming with active star formation. This provides vital clues about the specific environments that allowed these primordial monsters to grow.
Euclid’s discovery is not a matter of chance, but the result of systematic scientific work. The telescope continues to gather data to create a detailed map of the dark universe, and researchers expect even more groundbreaking finds in the near future. Each new data point on this map of early quasars brings us closer to answering how the cosmos managed to produce such massive structures just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
For astronomers, this represents a genuine breakthrough: a shift from observing isolated beacons to analyzing broad statistics. For anyone else looking up at the night sky, it serves as another reminder of just how dynamic and extraordinary our universe remains, even 13.8 billion years after its birth.
