Russian scientists have stumbled upon a real "beacon" in the Universe — one of the brightest quasars in the last five billion years. The discovery was announced by Alexander Lutovinov, Deputy Director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The object was successfully recorded during targeted observations: a powerful source flared up in the center of the data, giving a flux of several thousand photons. A detailed analysis showed that the researchers were not just looking at a distant object, but one of the brightest quasars in a huge period of cosmic time.
But the main thing is not the record itself, but what it revealed next. The scientists decided to "dive deeper" and scan the galactic plane — an area that is usually difficult to study due to dense clouds of dust and gas. It is there that even more ancient and distant objects may be hidden, in fact, traces of the early Universe.
If this quasar is just the tip of the iceberg, there may be discoveries ahead that will significantly expand the boundaries of the observable Universe and change our understanding of its structure.