"In cosmology, it turns out that 'a galaxy a long time ago' and
'far, far away' really do go together," says Associate Professor
Roger Romani, who with graduate student David Sowards-Emmerd and
Professor Peter Michelson of Stanford, and radio astronomer
Lincoln Greenhill of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, spotted one of the oldest supermassive black holes
yet found. The scientists collaborate at the Kavli Institute for
Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford. "In this case,
we're looking at [a black hole] far enough away that it's within
a billion years of the origin of it all, the Big Bang." The
supermassive black hole sits in the center of a galaxy. A disk
of stars and gas swirl around the black hole and eventually get
sucked in. "That generates enormous amounts of power, enormous
amounts of energy," Romani says. "It's far more efficient even
than nuclear fusion. These gravity-powered sources are the most
powerful sources in the universe." As black holes go, this one
is a messy eate