Spitzer views two unusual black holes

PASADENA, Calif., March 17 (UPI) -- U.S. astronomers say they have identified what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes ever seen.

NASA said the discovery, based largely on observations from its Spitzer Space Telescope, "will provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars came to be."

"We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, the lead author of the research.

NASA said black holes are distortions of space and time, with the largest and most active ones -- supermassive black holes -- usually seen at the cores of galaxies, surrounded by doughnut-shaped structures of dust and gas that feed and sustain the giant growing black holes that are called quasars.

Scientists have theorized the very early universe didn't have any dust, meaning the most primitive quasars should also be dust-free. But nobody had seen such immaculate quasars -- until now.

The newly observed black holes, the smallest on record, are about 13 billion light-years from Earth. The Spitzer observations were made before the telescope ran out of its liquid coolant last May, when it started its "warm" mission.

The discovery is reported in the journal Nature.