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The source is what scientists call a radio-loud quasar – a bright object with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths – that is so far away its light has taken 13 billion years to reach Earth. Researchers say the discovery could help them understand the early universe. Quasars are very bright objects at the centre of some galaxies, and are powered by supermassive black holes. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, making them visible to astronomers even when they are very far away. Watch: Does This Far-Off Galaxy Really Look Like the Milky Way? According to the study published in The Astrophysical Journal, the newly discovered quasar, nicknamed P172+18, is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach Earth. It is seen as it was when the universe was just around 780 million years old. This is the first time researchers have been able to identify the tell-tale signatures of radio jets in a quasar this early on in the history of the universe. Only about 10% of quasars – which astronomers classify as radio-loud – have jets, which shine brightly at radio frequencies. P172+18 is powered by a black hole about 300 million times bigger than the Sun. Chiara Mazzucchelli, a fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, led the discovery together with Eduardo Banados of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. She said: “The black hole is eating up matter very rapidly, growing in mass at one of the highest rates ever observed.”