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Given the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that puts the age of this black hole at 13.2 billion years.

Even more astounding to scientists, this black hole is a whopper — 10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way.

It's believed to weigh anywhere from 10% to 100% the mass of all the stars in its galaxy, said lead author Akos Bogdan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That is nowhere near the miniscule ratio of the black holes in our Milky Way and other nearby galaxies — an estimated 0.1%, he noted.

“It's just really early on in the universe to be such a behemoth," said Yale University's Priyamvada Natarajan, who took part in the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. A companion article appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It’s astounding how this thing actually is sitting in place already with its galaxy so early on in the universe.�

The researchers believe the black hole formed from colossal clouds of gas that collapsed in a galaxy next door to one with stars. The two galaxies merged, and the black hole took over.

The fact that Chandra detected it via X-ray confirms “without a doubt that it is a black hole,� according to Natarajan. With X-rays "you’re actually capturing the gas that is being gravitationally pulled into the black hole, sped up and it starts glowing in the X-rays," she said.

This one is considered a quasar since it's actively growing and the gas is blindingly bright, she added.

The Webb telescope alone may have spotted a black hole that is 29 million years older, according to scientists, but it’s yet to be observed in X-rays and verified. Natarajan expects more early black holes will be found — perhaps not as far out, but still quite distant.

“We are expecting a new window to open in the universe, and I think this is the first crack,� she said.

The two space telescopes — Webb and Chandra — used a technique called gravitational lensing to magnify the region of space where this galaxy, UHZ1, and its black hole are located. The telescopes used the light from a much closer cluster of galaxies, a mere 3.2 billion light-years from Earth, to magnify UHZ1 and its black hole much farther in the background.

“It’s a pretty faint object, and thanks to like luck, nature has magnified it for us,� Natarajan said

Launched in 2021 to a point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, Webb is the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space; it sees the universe in the infrared. The much older Chandra has X-ray vision; it rocketed into orbit in 1999.

“I absolutely find it amazing that Chandra can do such amazing discoveries 24 years after its launch,� Bogdan said.

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