Scientists have announced the discovery of a monster black hole powering "the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe" that is a massive 12bn times bigger than the sun.

Named SDSS J0100 2802, the object is estimated to exist 12.8 billion light years away from Earth and was formed only 900 million years after the occurrence of the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

A dense region of space that has collapsed in on itself in such as a way that even light cannot escape it is called a black hole. The black hole dwarfs even the Milky Way that lies in the centre of our galaxy and has a mass of three million suns.

The black hole lies in the centre of a quasar, which is an intensely powerful galactic radiation source, and has an energy output that is a million billion times greater than the sun. Astronomers discovered the quasar, which is the brightest ever to have been detected in the early universe, after conducting a survey of distant luminous objects with data from various large telescopes across the world.

The extraordinary object is one of the biggest supermassive black holes ever discovered and is likely to be the largest one found in the early universe.

Professor Xue-Bing Wu, from Peking University in China, who led the study reported in the journal Nature, said, "This quasar is very unique. We are so excited, when we found that there is such a luminous and massive quasar only 0.9bn years after the Big Bang. Just like the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe, its glowing light will help us to probe more about the early universe."

Scientists hope that the discovery of the colossal black hole will help them to better understand the universe when it was young.