Distant blazar discovery supports rapid black hole formation in the early universe

Astronomers have discovered an important piece of the puzzle of how supermassive black holes were able to grow so quickly in the early universe: a special kind of active galactic nucleus so distant that its light has taken more than 12.9 billion years to reach us. This so-called blazar serves as a statistical marker: its existence implies the presence of a large but hidden population of similar objects, all of which should emit powerful particle jets.