Astronomers claimed Monday that they had discovered perhaps the hungriest and most luminous object in the visible universe: a supermassive black hole that was swallowing a star every day. That would be the mass equivalent of 370 suns per year disappearing down a cosmic gullet 11 billion years ago at the beginning of time.

Burp indeed.

In a article published in Nature AstronomyChristian Wolf of the Australian National University and his colleagues from Australia and Europe called the object at the center of a newly discovered quasar known as J0529-4351 “the fastest growing black hole in the universe.”

According to their estimates, this black hole is one of the most massive black holes ever found: 17 billion times as massive as the Sun.

But other astrophysicists doubted the result and questioned the methods used to estimate the new quasar's mass and brightness. They said the calculations were too uncertain to be conclusive. “They may be the right value, but I don't think other observers would be shocked if it turned out that the actual mass was slightly smaller,” says Daniel Holz, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Chicago.

“It seems like an extreme object,” he said. But he added: “I would be shocked if this turned out to be the most luminous quasar in the sky.”

Jenny Greene, professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, called the result “cute.”

“It's nice to get the brightest out of something,” she said.

Yet she was with Dr. Holz agrees: “I don't think this brightness difference between this and other quasars is that great, and given the historical variability of quasars. It is not clear that this object is even brighter than the others.”

Chung-Pei Ma, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, weighed in, saying the estimate of these black hole masses could be off by a factor of two or three, “too big to make me lose sleep over the viability of the prevailing cosmological models.”

This is a story about mind-boggling big numbers, no matter how it plays out.

“There's a weird game we play in astronomy where we're always looking for the biggest, the brightest, the youngest, the oldest, etc.,” said Dr. Holz in an email. “Record-breaking objects are an efficient way to learn more about the universe. Extremes help clarify the contours of a problem and help push our theories to (or beyond) their breaking points.”

It's the same with quasars and black holes. Quasars are distant objects that resemble stars in the sky. In the 1960s it was discovered that they radiated improbable streams of energy, surpassing all stars in the galaxy in which they were embedded.

Astronomers have since concluded that all this energy is produced by matter falling into giant black holes. Just as a bathtub cannot drain in an instant, matter can only disappear into the cosmic drain at a rate called the Eddington limit, depending on the size of the black hole. The rest are trapped in a kind of ominous turnstile, a swirling, sparking disk that radiates energy. That makes black holes, despite their name, the brightest objects in the universe.

Because they resemble stars, quasars are difficult to find in the sky. Dr. Wolf, a dedicated quasar hunter, said in an email that he enjoyed the hunt. “I feel like a kid again,” he wrote.

In this case, the quasar was hiding in plain sight in the database of the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, which has mapped the locations and properties of billions of stars since its launch in 2013.

Dr. Wolf and his team identified it as a quasar after observing it with a telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. Follow-up spectrographic measurements with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope at La Silla in Chile allowed them to estimate the size of the accretion disk and the speed of the gas within it.

From this they in turn were able to conclude that the black hole had about 17 billion solar masses and was gaining mass as fast as it could, at the Eddington limit, given its size or mass.

“This process alone releases radiant energy from the accretion disk that is equivalent to the energy released by between 365 and 640 trillion suns,” the astronomers wrote in their paper. They hope to do better soon with an improved version of a new high-resolution instrument called Gravity on the Very Large Telescope, and the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope now being built in Chile.

Recognizing that all estimates of the masses of these distant black holes in the early Universe were indeed uncertain by a large margin, Dr. Wolf that the new instruments should be able to get a very well-defined image of the rotating storm disk leading to a precise black hole. mass. “This will check the scale we use to the highest and most extreme level, and it could help settle the debate about all these extrapolations we currently rely on,” he said. “This will certainly be an important step for cosmology.”

For comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is only four million times more massive than the Sun, and the black hole depicted at the center of the giant galaxy M87 in Virgo is 6.5 billion times more massive than the sun.

The recent detections of supermassive black holes in galaxies early in the universe's history, just a billion or two years after the Big Bang, have fueled debate about how they could grow so big so quickly. Astronomers have long theorized that when the universe was only about 100 million years old, it was littered with black holes as the first stars burned out, exploded and collapsed into black holes with masses several dozen times the mass of the Sun. In principle, over cosmic time they could evolve into the monsters that exist at the centers of almost all galaxies, by merging with other black holes, sucking in gas and occasionally eating a star that came too close .

At the observed growth rate, the quasar's black hole would have doubled every 30 million years, said Dr. Wolf, which would have increased the black hole's mass to 17 billion suns within three billion years of the Big Bang.

But it was unlikely, he continued, that black holes actually grew continuously at their maximum speed. He noted that black holes only occasionally reach their Eddington limit, when a party presents itself. Even larger black holes have been discovered in the early days of the universe by telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, but none are as luminous as J0529-4351.

That has led some astronomers to speculate that many of these black holes had primordial origins, older than stars and galaxies, and started out very massive.

“I have come to believe that black holes formed before galaxies, and that they were the seeds around which galaxies formed, rather than the other way around,” said Dr. Wolf.

“This was proposed decades ago, but was considered too crazy to become mainstream,” he said. But results from the new James Webb Space Telescope have breathed new life into this idea. “It's a very exciting time,” said Dr. Wolf.

The news

Inflation in the 20 countries that use the euro fell in the first month of 2024, returning to a downward trend and fueling hopes that eurozone prices were on track back to the European Central Bank's 2 percent target .

Consumer prices in the euro zone rose 2.8 percent in January from a year earlier, up from 2.9 percent in December, the European Union statistics agency reported on Thursday.

Economists had expected a slightly bigger dip. In fact, a correction after the expiration of some government subsidies caused inflation to rise in December.

Why it matters: The timing of rate cuts depends on data

Investors are watching for signs that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates, which policymakers kept at a record high of 4 percent last week. Central bank governor Christine Lagarde has hinted that a rate cut could happen mid-year, but policymakers would look to data to inform their decisions.

The figures released on Thursday may raise expectations that interest rates will fall sooner rather than later. Core inflation, the inflation rate that excludes volatile food and energy prices, continued its downward trend, cooling from 3.4 percent in December to 3.3 percent in January. That figure is crucial for the ECB because it reflects underlying trends in prices across the eurozone.

The European statistics agency said on Tuesday that the euro zone economy stagnated in the fourth quarter of last year, hampered by an ongoing energy crisis and a slump in manufacturing in Germany, Europe's largest economy.

Quotable: “Too early to make everything clear”

“While today's figures still show declining price pressure, it is far too early to provide clarity on inflation,” ING's Peter Vanden Houte wrote in a research note. The ECB will remain cautious, he said, “and will not consider a rate cut before June.”

Nikki Haley lost to Iowa. Then she lost New Hampshire. Now some of the biggest donors in the Republican Party — a Trump-resistant donor class that has been fueling its candidacy for months — are at least opening the door to former President Donald J. Trump.

A network of some of the nation's wealthiest Republican donors gathered this week at a winter meeting in Florida, held by the American Opportunity Alliance, and heard from top aides to both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley. The meeting on Monday and Tuesday was one of the first significant steps for some of these donors in Mr. Trump's halting return to reality, after aides to Mr. Trump did not receive such an invitation to the group's fall retreat.

Ms. Haley has a series of fundraisers in the coming days, one of which will be held in New York City on Tuesday evening. Money will not be an obstacle to her candidacy. But privately, some of the party's top donors — including some who support Ms. Haley — say they are ready for the fight to end in order to focus on President Biden, conceding that Ms. Haley has little chance of overtaking Mr. Trump without an unforeseen event.

At the American Opportunity Alliance retreat, Ms. Haley had far more support than Mr. Trump. Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund executive and major Republican donor who attended the retreat, gave $5 million to her super PAC this month, according to a person close to him.

Before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida withdrew from the race, he and his allies had expected Mr. Griffin's support because the investor had given him generously in the past. But Mr. Griffin was disappointed by what he saw as an incompetent campaign coupled with deep policy mistakes, such as Mr. DeSantis' description of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” according to several people familiar with his thinking.

Mr. Griffin had been waiting for a younger candidate who could challenge Mr. Trump, and it took him months before he decided to back Ms. Haley. He praised Ms. Haley in a statement to reporters, saying that “America would be well served by having someone with her foreign policy credentials and policy priorities in the White House.”

But speaking at an event earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Griffin admitted that her path was “narrower” than it was two months ago, before Mr. Trump won Iowa and New Hampshire. The $5 million he contributed to Ms. Haley's super PAC, while a significant amount by normal accounting, is a relatively modest donation for Mr. Griffin. In 2022 he has spent $50 million in an effort to defeat Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat.

Another donor, Las Vegas developer Robert Bigelow, is not part of the AOA network but had backed Mr. DeSantis with a $20 million donation to his super PAC. This week he said he was giving the same amount to Trump.

Olivia Perez-Cubas, spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, said: “No one said this would be easy, but we continue to run a smart campaign that will ensure Republicans don't continue to lose. Nikki is the only thing standing in the way of a rematch between Trump and Biden, something 70 percent of Americans do not want.”

Susie Wiles, a top adviser to Mr. Trump's campaign, told the AOA meeting at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach, Florida, a simple story, using graphs, that depicted Mr. Trump as the inevitable Republican nominee. She described to donors how he would win in the fall and said the campaign would welcome support from the party's top donors, according to three people familiar with the event.

Ms. Wiles' invitation to the AOA event marked the first time the group, which holds two meetings a year, had hosted a representative from the Trump camp during the 2024 primaries. At their fall meeting last year in Dallas, only advisers to Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina were invited. Both Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Scott have since withdrawn from the presidential race.

Ms. Haley's campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, gave what two people described as an impassioned pitch at the AOA meeting, calling her candidate an alternative to a chaotic and unpopular presidential candidate who could set off a domino effect of losses in the House and the Senate for the party. November.

Ms. Ankney laid out what she portrayed as damning facts about Trump's candidacy. Her litany included the $83.3 million Trump was ordered to pay last week in a defamation lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom an earlier jury found he had sexually abused, according to the people familiar with her comments .

Ms. Ankney acknowledged that Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, faced an uphill battle to defeat Mr. Trump. But she insisted that Ms. Haley stay in the race as long as she had money and momentum, the people said.

Ms. Haley has longstanding ties to a number of donors to the American Opportunity Alliance, and the network does not move in lockstep. Nevertheless, Ms. Wiles' presentation to the group of largely Trump-resistant donors reflects that many of them are finally, after much whining and whining, entering the acceptance phase of the grieving cycle. Whether those offended by Mr. Trump decide to join him, sit out the primaries or stay on the sidelines in a general election remains to be seen.

Ms. Wiles' presentation came just days after the former president threatened to freeze all major donors giving to Ms. Haley in a post on his social media website, Truth Social. Ms. Wiles acknowledged her candidate's comments, but mentioned the various ways her team had tried to get Mr. Trump's nomination done as quickly as possible. For example, she highlighted how the Trump team had worked behind the scenes, with a team of experienced strategists, to get the Republican parties to change the rules so he could gather as many delegates as possible.

She also promoted the Trump campaign's powerful online fundraising operation and questioned Ms. Haley's general election prospects. She said she doubted the former president's die-hard base would vote for Ms. Haley. Mr. Trump has criticized Ms. Haley for appealing to Democrats and independents in open primaries, and his advisers have said she crossed a line by saying this weekend that she had confidence in the New York jury that found Ms. Carroll had slandered. .

The presentations and their reception by the gathered donors were described by three people people who attended or were briefed on it and who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.

The winter meeting of the group – founded a decade ago by wealthy investors including Paul Singer and Mr. Griffin, both hedge fund magnates – came at a crucial time in the Republican primaries. Trump, fresh off decisive victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, hopes to crush Ms. Haley in her home state of South Carolina in the Feb. 24 primaries, likely dealing a fatal blow to her candidacy.

For the Trump team, which is simultaneously fighting the four criminal charges Mr. Trump was charged with in 2023, spending money on Ms. Haley during the month of February, weeks before any of the trials can begin, is an unwelcome proposition.

This week's event was, as several people described it, much less confrontational than the last AOA meeting. During that meeting, the DeSantis team in particular faced questions that, according to those present, bordered on hostility.

An ally of Ms. Haley, who spoke anonymously because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss the event, praised Ms. Wiles for appearing before a skeptical audience.

“The bridge was never burned,” said a senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, when asked in an interview about the Trump campaign's stance toward major Republican donors like Mr. Singer and Mr. Griffin, who opposed the Mr Trump have resisted.

“The bridge is there,” Mr. LaCivita added. “It's up to them whether they want to cross. These are all smart people. They know there is no path to victory, no matter what Nikki and co are. invent.”

Israel said its military is beginning to shift from a large-scale ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip to a more focused phase in its war against Hamas, and Israeli officials privately told their American counterparts that they hoped the transition would be completed by 2010 . in late January, U.S. officials said.

Israel’s revelation came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Israel was expected to urge officials there to curtail their campaign in Gaza and prevent the war from spreading across the region, especially in the aftermath of an Israeli attack last week that killed high-ranking Hamas officials. leaders in Lebanon and, as Hezbollah said, one of its commanders was killed in an attack in the country.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, said the new phase of the campaign involved fewer troops and airstrikes. U.S. officials said they expected the transition to rely more on surgical missions by smaller groups of elite Israeli forces moving in and out of population centers in the Gaza Strip to find and kill Hamas leaders, rescue hostages and destroy tunnels.

“The war changed a phase,” Admiral Hagari said in an interview Monday. “But the transition will take place without ceremony,” he added. “It’s not about dramatic announcements.”

He said Israel would continue to reduce the number of troops in Gaza, a process that began this month. The intensity of operations in northern Gaza has already begun to decline, he added, as the army focuses on carrying out one-off attacks there rather than large-scale maneuvers.

Israel will now focus instead on Hamas’ southern and central strongholds, especially around Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, Admiral Hagari said, adding that he expected more aid and tents to be allowed into Gaza.

U.S. officials say they believe the number of Israeli troops in the northern part of Gaza has fallen to less than half of the roughly 50,000 troops present at the height of the campaign last month. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

Still, Israeli officials have made it clear to U.S. officials that while they hope to complete the transition by the end of the month, the timeline is not set in stone. If Israeli forces face Hamas resistance that is fiercer than expected, or if they discover threats they did not anticipate, the size and pace of the withdrawal could slow and intensive airstrikes could continue, they said.

President Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, in which the Israeli army, armed with American weapons, has killed about 23,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

But Mr. Biden is under pressure internationally and from his own administration to rein in Israel’s campaign, which was launched after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages.

Mr. Biden told aides last month that he wanted the Israelis to make the transition around Jan. 1. The Israelis presented the Americans with their own transition timeline. When Mr. Biden’s aides heard this, they urged the Israelis to act faster

With the transition underway, there is a growing sense of urgency among Israeli and US officials to come up with plans to restore and maintain law and order in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces accelerate their withdrawal.

Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that they envision a loose network of local mayors, security officials and leaders of prominent Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip intervening to provide short-term basic security in the areas where they live. These local leaders could oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid and maintain day-to-day order, according to Israeli officials.

While many of these local leaders are likely to have some ties to Hamas, which took control of the area in 2007, Israeli officials see a district-by-district approach, in collaboration with aid groups on the ground, as their best option for distributing humanitarian aid and to provide citizens with a degree of security.

Israeli officials have floated a wide range of other ideas. Some of them have expressed hope that the Arab states will agree to send a peacekeeping force. Others have promoted the idea of ​​a multinational military force led by the United States, but with Israeli security supervision of the strip. But U.S. officials say their Israeli counterparts have not formally asked them to pursue the idea of ​​an international force because they know it is unlikely to happen.

Israel’s plans are generally not detailed enough, amid public disagreement among members of the government over how much control Israel should retain over Gaza after the war. Some have called for Israeli civilians to resettle the area, while others, such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have ruled out an Israeli civilian presence.

To ensure security in the Gaza Strip in the medium and long term, US officials have proposed retraining members of the Palestinian Authority security forces. U.S. officials said they believed there are at least 6,000 members of these forces in the Gaza Strip, but that retraining them will take many months, and it is unclear whether Israel will accept their deployment or how the local population will receive them.

The Biden administration has called for a “renewed and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war, seeing this as a path to a two-state solution that would create a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza and the West Bank, a proposal that many Israelis on the right are against it. Until now, Israeli leaders have all but ruled out the idea of ​​the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority running the Gaza Strip, and many Palestinians see the Gaza Strip as corrupt and an extension of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has said it will only assist in post-war governance if it is part of a broader process toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

On January 1, the Israeli military announced that it would begin withdrawing several thousand troops from the Gaza Strip, at least temporarily. Israeli officials privately told their American counterparts that this was the beginning of the transition.

Mr. Blinken has visited about half a dozen countries in the region since landing in Turkey on Friday and has spoken to leaders in each about how they could help in a post-war Gaza. He expects to speak with Israeli leaders in coming months about winding down the war and how the strip could function, a State Department official said during the trip.

Israel said its military is beginning to shift from a large-scale ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip to a more focused phase in its war against Hamas, and Israeli officials privately told their American counterparts that they hoped the transition would be completed by 2010 . in late January, U.S. officials said.

Israel’s revelation came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Israel was expected to urge officials there to curtail their campaign in Gaza and prevent the war from spreading across the region, especially in the aftermath of an Israeli attack last week that killed high-ranking Hamas officials. leaders in Lebanon and, as Hezbollah said, one of its commanders was killed in an attack in the country.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army’s chief spokesman, said the new phase of the campaign involved fewer troops and airstrikes. U.S. officials said they expected the transition to rely more on surgical missions by smaller groups of elite Israeli forces moving in and out of population centers in the Gaza Strip to find and kill Hamas leaders, rescue hostages and destroy tunnels.

“The war changed a phase,” Admiral Hagari said in an interview Monday. “But the transition will take place without ceremony,” he added. “It’s not about dramatic announcements.”

He said Israel would continue to reduce the number of troops in Gaza, a process that began this month. The intensity of operations in northern Gaza has already begun to decline, he added, as the army focuses on carrying out one-off attacks there rather than large-scale maneuvers.

Israel will now focus instead on Hamas’ southern and central strongholds, especially around Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, Admiral Hagari said, adding that he expected more aid and tents to be allowed into Gaza.

U.S. officials say they believe the number of Israeli troops in the northern part of Gaza has fallen to less than half of the roughly 50,000 troops present at the height of the campaign last month. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

Still, Israeli officials have made it clear to U.S. officials that while they hope to complete the transition by the end of the month, the timeline is not set in stone. If Israeli forces face Hamas resistance that is fiercer than expected, or if they discover threats they did not anticipate, the size and pace of the withdrawal could slow and intensive airstrikes could continue, they said.

President Biden has strongly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, in which the Israeli army, armed with American weapons, has killed about 23,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

But Mr. Biden is under pressure internationally and from his own administration to rein in Israel’s campaign, which was launched after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and captured 240 hostages.

Mr. Biden told aides last month that he wanted the Israelis to make the transition around Jan. 1. The Israelis presented the Americans with their own transition timeline. When Mr. Biden’s aides heard this, they urged the Israelis to act faster

With the transition underway, there is a growing sense of urgency among Israeli and US officials to come up with plans to restore and maintain law and order in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces accelerate their withdrawal.

Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that they envision a loose network of local mayors, security officials and leaders of prominent Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip intervening to provide short-term basic security in the areas where they live. These local leaders could oversee the distribution of humanitarian aid and maintain day-to-day order, according to Israeli officials.

While many of these local leaders are likely to have some ties to Hamas, which took control of the area in 2007, Israeli officials see a district-by-district approach, in collaboration with aid groups on the ground, as their best option for distributing humanitarian aid and to provide citizens with a degree of security.

Israeli officials have floated a wide range of other ideas. Some of them have expressed hope that the Arab states will agree to send a peacekeeping force. Others have promoted the idea of ​​a multinational military force led by the United States, but with Israeli security supervision of the strip. But U.S. officials say their Israeli counterparts have not formally asked them to pursue the idea of ​​an international force because they know it is unlikely to happen.

Israel’s plans are generally not detailed enough, amid public disagreement among members of the government over how much control Israel should retain over Gaza after the war. Some have called for Israeli civilians to resettle the area, while others, such as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have ruled out an Israeli civilian presence.

To ensure security in the Gaza Strip in the medium and long term, US officials have proposed retraining members of the Palestinian Authority security forces. U.S. officials said they believed there are at least 6,000 members of these forces in the Gaza Strip, but that retraining them will take many months, and it is unclear whether Israel will accept their deployment or how the local population will receive them.

The Biden administration has called for a “renewed and revitalized” Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war, seeing this as a path to a two-state solution that would create a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza and the West Bank, a proposal that many Israelis on the right are against it. Until now, Israeli leaders have all but ruled out the idea of ​​the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority running the Gaza Strip, and many Palestinians see the Gaza Strip as corrupt and an extension of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority has said it will only assist in post-war governance if it is part of a broader process toward the creation of a Palestinian state.

On January 1, the Israeli military announced that it would begin withdrawing several thousand troops from the Gaza Strip, at least temporarily. Israeli officials privately told their American counterparts that this was the beginning of the transition.

Mr. Blinken has visited about half a dozen countries in the region since landing in Turkey on Friday and has spoken to leaders in each about how they could help in a post-war Gaza. He expects to speak with Israeli leaders in coming months about winding down the war and how the strip could function, a State Department official said during the trip.