Ancient Beacons: Euclid Unveils 31 Quasars from the Dawn of Time | The Trillion-Sun Mystery
Is the history of our universe being rewritten by the light of a trillion suns? On July 6, 2026, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium announced a landmark discovery: 31 of the most ancient quasars ever found. In today’s episode, we investigate two record-breaking celestial elders—EUCL J172902.75+641018.1 and EUCL J125308.55+705432.3—which date back to a time when the universe was only 670 million years old.
We break down the "census" of the early universe: how Euclid managed to find more high-redshift quasars in one year than astronomers found in the previous decade. We analyze the collaboration with the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which confirmed these findings using infrared spectroscopy. Join us as we explore the greatest puzzle in astrophysics: How did supermassive black holes, weighing billions of times our sun, form so quickly after the Big Bang?.
This episode includes AI-generated content.