Ancient Galactic Black Holes

You're no doubt aware of how powerful the Spitzer Space Scope is. NASA can take alot of credit here. Astronomers have discovered what seem to be the earliest, most supermassive black holes known to mankind. Whew....

What they've basically found - and what it means to understanding our own origins - are ancient quasars born in a dust-free universe - the earliest stages of evolution. (A quasar is what you get when matter interacts with massive black holes. It gives off radiation and more light than any star) The universe didn't have any dust at its inception which tells astronomers that quasars from that time should also be dust-free. But no one has seen one - UNTIL NOW! Spitzer has identified two, the smallest on record, about 13 billion light years from earth. O yea. Here's a quasar over 3 billion light years from earth; isn't it beautiful?
Below is an image caught of a supermassive massive black hole as it eclipses in its galaxy NGC1365 (NGC=New Galactic Cataloge)So think about it: these supermassive black holes existed around the time the early universe did not yet have the ability to form dust, about a billion years post Big Bang. The picture below is of a system containing two quasars about 4.6 billion years away. Now that's pretty amazing since the scientific age of earth is 4.6 billion years old. You're looking at something just as it appeared when earth was still forming out of colliding asteroids, comets, etc.
We're gazing back at the beginnings of time and space - nothing less.
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Now for your jaw-dropping viewing pleasure, this is the image taken by Hubble of "The Veiled Black Hole". The left is the x-ray image and the right shows the galaxy it is interacting with. That's right - black holes are not black.