An international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the structure and evolution of this enigmatic period.