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Telescope spots most distant quasars ever discovered

▶ Watch Video: Europe’s Euclid space telescope launched by SpaceX

The Euclid space telescope has spotted the oldest quasars — the brightest objects in the universe — ever discovered, deepening a cosmic mystery that has been puzzling scientists.

Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes at the heart of early galaxies gobbling up surrounding matter in a colossal feeding frenzy that can shine trillions of times brighter than the sun.

Because they are so incredibly bright — and looking deep into space also means looking back in time — scientists have been hunting for ancient quasars to learn more about the little-understood infancy of the universe.

In a study published on Monday, an international team of astronomers announced they had discovered 31 quasars, including the two oldest observed yet, using the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope, which is at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

The light from the oldest pair comes from when the universe was roughly 670 million years old, just five percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years.  

This beats the team’s previous record for oldest — and therefore most distant — quasar announced in 2021 by around 20 million years.

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This collage shows 15 of the 31 newly discovered quasars by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. 

European Space Agency

Previous quasar hunts were mostly carried out with ground-based telescopes, but the launch of Euclid in 2023 “has transformed this field,” Daming Yang, the lead author of the study in Astronomy & Astrophysics, told AFP.

In just two years, Euclid has doubled the number of ancient quasars known to science, added Yang, a PhD student at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

“Euclid is a true game-changer,” Yang said in a statement. “Before, we could only find a handful of the very brightest ancient quasars, but Euclid lets us search far more efficiently across huge areas of sky to capture much fainter light. It’s a unique tool for quasar hunting.”

Cosmic quandary

The newly discovered quasars date back to what is known as the epoch of reionization. This when the first stars and galaxies began to form, bringing an end to the cosmic dark ages.

“We can use quasars as a lighthouse to study the gas between us and them, so that we can trace how the universe was reionized through this cosmic history,” Daming Yang said.

The quasars are also the latest example of a problem that has been increasingly baffling scientists.

As more powerful telescopes allow us to see further back in time, galaxies and other cosmic objects have turned out to be far bigger than had been thought possible at such an early age.

“Every step further back in time makes the puzzle more perplexing,” study co-author Joseph Hennawi said in a statement about the newly discovered quasars.

“These monsters — weighing billions of times the mass of our sun — somehow already existed when the universe was in its infancy,” he said. “We don’t yet have a good understanding of how they grew so massive, so fast.”

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Artist’s concept of an ancient quasar

European Space Agency

Hoping to find an answer, the scientists are searching for even older quasars.

The far-seeing James Webb space telescope also recently observed the newly announced quasars, Daming said, and the team will soon begin sifting through the data it collected.

The team eventually hope to stitch together “a quasar chronicle of the first billion years,” Hennawi said.

Euclid’s cosmic mission

Euclid launched in 2023 on a mission to chart one-third of the sky in the hopes of shedding light on the enduring mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Just last month, scientists announced the Euclid telescope had captured the largest and most detailed photo ever taken of our galaxy’s crowded heart, a dazzling image packed with 60 million stars, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.

In 2024, Euclid captured dazzling photos of the cosmos, including an image of a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 2390. The image of the cluster, which is 2.7 billion light years away from Earth, encompasses more than 50,000 galaxies.

Another jaw-dropping image, captured in 2023, provides a spectacular wide-angle view of the Perseus galaxy cluster, revealing at least 1,000 gravitationally-bound galaxies with another 100,000 or so sprinkled across the more distant background — many of them never before seen.

Launched from Cape Canaveral on July 1, 2023 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the $1.5 billion Euclid is stationed about a million miles from Earth on the far side of the moon’s orbit.

Over the course of its six-year mission, the observatory will image the entire sky around the Milky Way, monitoring galaxies and galaxy clusters dating back 10 billion years.

‘Aura farming’ began as a meme. Latin American youth have turned it into a competitive sport

By CNN
(CNN) — A group of rowdy spectators gathers in a public square, encircling two young men facing each other with intense looks in their eyes. The crowd points their phones at the pair, who are alternating between short dances, rhythmic movements, and striking poses.This is not a scene from “Zoolander;” the crowd is attending a championship of “aura” in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, according to videos posted to TikTok and Instagram.Tuesday’s event at the University of Costa Rica is one of many so-called “aura battles” that have taken off in Latin American countries, including Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. The contests appear to be designed for virality, with young competitors often demonstrating exaggerated versions of popular TikTok dance moves for the audience.Outrageousness seems to be the point of these battles, which have no apparent criteria, judges, or rules. Instead, contestants compete for crowd reaction and are rewarded with attention and, in some cases, small cash prizes.The phenomenon may have a special appeal to youth in the region due to a culture of assembling in public areas, Frederick Luis Aldama, a humanities professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told CNN.“These are definitely collective and public and person to person, and because in Latin America, we have a long history of the plaza, of the courtyard, of the gathering in the parks,” Aldama explained.They also provide a free, nonviolent space for youth to seek human connection among their peers and may reflect a desire to disconnect from technology and be present, he said.Aldama happened to witness one such “aura battle” in Mexico City’s Parque México.“What I noticed was completely against what I had been trained to think would be the winner, which is someone who was doing a more high-intensity kind of move,” he said. “I realized that the one that won was the one who just brought the kind of aura, the glow of absolute total composure.”Taking inspiration from ‘aura farming’The battle’s precursor comes from “aura farming,” a term that has taken renewed meaning online in recent years.“Aura farming” is described by the Merriam Webster dictionary as “the act of doing something to look cool, impressive, stylish, etc., especially — and importantly — without trying too hard.”The phrase first surfaced in early 2024 and has grown in popularity since, according to Know Your Meme. It reached a wider audience the following year through viral videos featuring an 11-year-old Indonesian boy named Rayyan Arkan Dikha, dancing at the front of a boat.With a steely disposition, Dikha is seen in the videos standing at the very front of a thin boat, executing a repetitive series of dance moves as a line of rowers propel them through a river. As the videos quickly gained traction, commenters and other social media users remarked on the high levels of “aura” possessed by Dikha.Since then, Dikha has accrued thousands of followers on Instagram and was named a tourism ambassador for his home province of Riau.As his performance amassed millions of views, the term “aura farming” began frequently appearing across the internet: from video edits glorifying anime characters to X posts celebrating athletes or celebrities.‘They become a character’“Aura battles” have begun appearing in public spaces across Latin American countries, often organized by local content creators and engineered for maximum virality. Videos of the competitions have received hundreds of thousands of views on social media.Victor Gabriel Tourinho Camargo, a Brazilian content creator known as Uvitinho, organized several tournaments in the city of Suzano.More than 200 people participated, Uvitinho said. Videos showed the participants packed into a park, including one dressed as a sheikh with a briefcase full of Brazilian reais.“The aura farming championship was something created with the focus of taking something popular on the internet and bringing it to reality, mixing it with childhood games and showing people and children that there is still hope for a more real life with genuine moments,” Uvitinho told CNN.“There was a mix of shy, antisocial and extroverted people… and in that moment, they all put aside all that, played together, and made friends,” he added.Mexican YouTuber Alex Crashers described encountering an aura battle in Mexico in a video shared this week. “Even though it seems silly, I got hyped every time someone pulled off a new move,” he said.Argentinian content creator Cielo, known as Cieloween, helped organize an “aura battle” in Chinatown in Buenos Aires scheduled for this Saturday after watching viral videos of a previous battle in the coastal city of Mar del Plata just days before. “The concept of ‘aura farming’ has been around for a while, but now the competition aspect has started to take off,” she told CNN.In many ways, the events resemble past versions of youth “battles” in which competitors were equipped with Pokémon cards, Beyblades or rap verses.Cieloween explained that the moves shown by participants vary widely. “It depends on the person and what they want to show. Some are more serious, while others are more humorous and entertaining. It depends on the person and the character they want to portray, because ultimately, they become a character,” she said.Cieloween said she doesn’t know how many people will attend Saturday’s event, but that the goal is to build community. “That’s what it’s all about: meeting people, being together, connecting with people who share your interests. Making friends, laughing. That’s what we’re going for,” she said.But the showcase has also attracted skeptics.The battle at the University of Costa Rica gained significant attention, with some viewers leaving comments on the videos over the spectacle.In the Brazilian city of Cuiabá, the mayor, Abílio Brunini, prohibited one such championship from taking place in the city’s main public space. “I believe that, in the future, the people who participate in this game will feel very ashamed,” he said.Still, social media videos showed individuals defiantly competing in front of the City Hall building in July.Despite some derision, the competitions have continued as participants embrace the absurdity and young people seek connection. “All this stuff that’s thrown at them, having gone through lockdown, having been like pulled away from these so-called third spaces, these plazas, these places of engagement. No wonder it’s coming back like a storm,” Aldama, the University of Texas professor, told CNN.He compares the criticism to the backlash faced by the Australian breakdancer Raygun, who was mocked for her viral Olympic performance.“There’s always going to be that negativity,” Aldama said. “But what I saw and experienced was really working-class youth, especially in Latin America, gathering to celebrate something joyful.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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