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44 ASTRO PUBLISHING ing black hole in the dusty core of a starburst galaxy at an epoch close to the earliest super massive black hole known in the Universe,” explains Seiji Fujimoto, an astronomer at the Niels Bohr Institute of the Uni- versity of Copenhagen in Denmark and lead author of the paper de- scribing this discovery. “The object’s properties across the electromag- netic spectrum are in excellent agreement with predictions from theoretical simulations.” Current theories predict that super- massive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigor- ously star-forming “starburst” gal- axies before expelling the surround- ing gas and dust and emerging as extremely luminous quasars. Whilst they are extremely rare, examples of both dusty starburst galaxies and luminous quasars have been de- tected in the early Universe. The team believes that GNz7q could be the “missing link” between these two classes of objects. JULY-AUGUST 2022 Supermassive black hole precursor detected A stronomers have struggled to understand the emer- gence of supermassive black holes in the early Universe ever since these objects were discovered at distances corresponding to a time only 750 million years after the Big Bang. Rapidly growing black holes in dusty, early star-forming galaxies are predicted by theories and com- puter simulations but until now they had not been observed. Now, however, astronomers have reported the discovery of an object — which they name GNz7q — that is believed to be the first such rap- idly growing black hole to be found in the early Universe. Archival Hubble data from the Ad- vanced Camera for Surveys helped the team study the compact ultravi- olet emission from the black hole’s accretion disc and to determine that GNz7q existed just 750 million years after the Big Bang. “Our analysis suggests that GNz7q is the first example of a rapidly-grow- by NASA/ESA Bethany Downer