CANBERRA, Feb 20: A galaxy powered by the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded is the brightest known object in the universe, joint research has found.
A team led by researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) detailed the 2022 discovery of the black hole, which devours the equivalent of one sun every day, and the subsequent discovery that the galaxy it powers is the brightest object in the known universe.
The black hole, which was first detected in 2022, exists in a quasar-the core of a distant galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole that adds material to itself-and has a mass approximately 17 billion times greater than that of our sun.
The study published on Monday confirmed it is the brightest known object in the universe.
Researchers said it was a surprise that the black hole remained undetected for so long.
“The incredible rate of growth also means a huge release of light and heat,” Christian Wolf, lead author of the study from the ANU, said in a media release.
“So, this is also the most luminous known object in the universe. It’s 200 trillion times brighter than our sun.”
The light from the black hole travelled 12 billion light years to reach Earth.
The researchers found that a disc around the black hole measures seven light years across-50 percent larger than the distance between our solar system and the next star in the galaxy.
Wolf described the disc as a holding pattern for the material waiting to be devoured by the black hole, where temperatures exceed 10,000 degrees Celsius.
The research was done in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the European Southern Observatory, and France’s Sorbonne University.
(UNI)
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