Researchers say a quasar nine billion light years from earth could offer an alternative to black hole theory. A quasar is a very bright, compact object whose radiation is believed to be generated by a black hole nibbling at its surrounding matter. But the new theory says black holes do not exist but are really bizarre and compact balls of plasma called magnetospheric eternally collapsing object (MECO).

Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts and his team observed quasar Q0957+561 during a rare cosmological coincidence that allowed them to probe the structure of the quasar in great detail. Those details suggest the central object is not a black hole at all.

A black hole is an object with such a powerful gravitational field even light is not fast enough to escape it. Anything within the black hole's event horizon (a certain distance from its center) will be trapped. Black holes are also incapable of sustaining a magnetic field of their own. But the team's observations of the quasar indicate its "black hole" does have a magnetic field and they say it could be a MECO, not a black hole.

According to the MECO theory, objects in the universe cannot collapse to form black holes. When an object gets very dense and hot, subatomic particles start popping in and out of existence inside it in huge numbers, producing large amounts of radiation. Outward pressure from this radiation stops the collapse and the object remains a hot ball of plasma rather than forming a black hole.