Astronomers detect vast amounts of gas and dust around black hole in early universe

Press release from the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and the Astronomische Gesellschaft (AG) on the occasion of the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2012) in Manchester.

Using the IRAM array of millimetre-wave telescopes in the French Alps, a team of European astronomers from Germany, the UK and France has discovered a large reservoir of gas and dust in a galaxy that surrounds the most distant supermassive black hole known. Light from the galaxy, called J1120+0641, has taken so long to reach us that the galaxy is seen as it was only 740 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 1/18th of its current age.

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• Complete English version of the press release (pdf)
• German version (pdf)
• Abbildung 1
• Abbildung 2
• NAM-Tagung in Manchester
  (http://www.jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk/meetings/nam2012/)
• Royal Astronomical Society
  (http://www.ras.org.uk/)
• Astronomische Gesellschaft
  (http://www.astronomische-gesellschaft.de)
• Underlying scientific publication
  (http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.5844)