A team of researchers from Japan, Britain and the United States have observed for the first time a mysterious, gigantic heavenly body that existed in the early universe 12.9 billion years ago, using equipment including Japan's Subaru telescope in Hawaii.

The reason for the celestial object's enormous size cannot be explained by current theories.

The heavenly body has been named Himiko after an ancient Japanese queen.

Himiko was discovered in a location 12.9 billion light years away from Earth.

In the history of the universe, the birth of which is believed to have taken place about 13.7 billion years ago, the object existed at an early stage in the life of the cosmos, 800 million years after the universe began.

It was the first time that a huge celestial object from that stage of the history of the universe of such size--comparable to that of the Milky Way galaxy--has been observed.

The spatial expanse of Himiko is 55,000 light years, more than 10 times larger than other heavenly bodies of the same stage in cosmic history.

The mass of the heavenly body is equivalent to 40 billion suns.

According to the latest theories, a heavenly body becomes big due to the accumulation of many smaller heavenly bodies.

This discovery, however, creates a new mystery--explaining the existance of massive objects at the early stages of the history of the universe.

The structure of Himiko resembles that of a hydrogen cloud.



In addition to the possiblity that a gigantic black hole exists at its center, there also is a possibility that stars could have been formed in the object.

However, its true shape remains unknown.

Masami Ouchi, a fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who lead the research team, said, "From the research on Himiko, we want to close in on the evolution process of the initial stages of the universe."


-The Yomiuri Shimbun-