Abstract
ALTHOUGH great efforts1–8 have been made to locate molecular gas—the material out of which stars form—in the early Universe, there have been only two firm detections at high redshift. Both are gravitationally lensed objects at redshift z ≈ 2.5 (refs 9–14). Here we report the detection of CO emission from the radio-quiet quasar BR1202 – 0725, which is at redshift z = 4.69. From the observed CO luminosity, we estimate that almost 1011 solar masses of molecular hydrogen are associated with the quasar; this is comparable to the stellar mass of a present-day luminous galaxy. Our results suggest that BR1202 – 0725 is a massive galaxy, in which the gas is largely concentrated in the central region, and that it is currently undergoing a large burst of star formation.
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Ohta, K., Yamada, T., Nakanishi, K. et al. Detection of molecular gas in the quasar BR1202 – 0725 at redshift z = 4.69. Nature 382, 426–428 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/382426a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/382426a0
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