Scientists recently reported discovering what they believe to be the most massive black hole ever discovered in the early universe.
It has 34 billion times the mass of the Sun and eats the equivalent of one Sun every day.
The study, led by the Australian National University (ANU), reveals how big the fastest-growing black hole in the universe is and how much matter it can hold.
A black hole known as ‘J2157’ was discovered by the same research team in 2018.
A report characterizing a massive black hole was published in the Royal Astronomical Society’s monthly newsletter. According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, it has 34 billion times the mass of the Sun and consumes the equivalent of one Sun per day. That’s a capital B for 1 billion.
In terms of mass, the giant black hole is about 8,000 times more massive than Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
“For a black hole in the Milky Way to get bigger, it would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in the galaxy,” he explains Onken.
Scientists analyzed the object when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, or less than 10% of its current age, making it the largest known black hole by mass in the early universe. “This is the largest black hole measured in the early universe,” says Onken.
The team is now looking for more black holes in hopes of finding some answers as to why black holes grew so large in the early stages of the universe.
An image of quasar j2157, 12.5 billion light years away. It radiates a thousand times more energy than our entire galaxy. Photo credit:DSS2/Aladdin.
“When we saw the rapid growth rate, we knew we were dealing with a very large black hole,” said Dr. He, a member of the team at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Astronomy. Person Huyanbian.
“How many black holes can be swallowed depends on the mass they already have. This object consumes matter so quickly that we thought it might set a new record. And now we know,” he says.
A team including researchers from the University of Arizona used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to precisely measure the black hole’s mass.
“With a black hole this big, I’m excited to see what we can learn about the galaxies in which it grows,” he said.
“Is this galaxy just one of the giant galaxies of the early universe, or did a black hole consume an abnormal amount of its surroundings? To find it, you’ll have to keep digging. ”
J2157 is a massive black hole at the center of the quasar galaxy. Astronomers have learned more about the cosmic behemoth thanks to observations made with the equally gigantic 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii and the 8-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile.
Astronomers were able to determine the distance and overall brightness of the quasar. This allowed us to determine the size of the black hole and how much matter it could consume from the disk.
Black holes are huge. It has a diameter of about 200 billion kilometers. If we replace it with our sun, it is so huge that it encompasses the entire solar system.