A group of scientists say they have discovered the fastest-growing black hole in the last nine billion years. The black hole consumes the equivalent of one earth per second, according to an international team led by astronomers from the National University of Australia (ANU) in Canberra.
Astronomers said the black hole is visible to anyone with a decent telescope in a very dark backyard, as it glows 7,000 more than all the light in our own galaxy.
Scientists say they have discovered the fastest-growing black hole in the last nine billion years. (Dr. Christopher Onken / ANU)
The black hole is believed to have a mass of three billion soles, while others of comparable size stopped growing so rapidly billions of years ago.
The research has been published on the online research exchange platform arXiv and has been submitted to the Australian Astronomical Society’s scientific journal Publications for peer review.
Lead researcher Dr. Christopher Onken said astronomers “have been hunting objects like this for over 50 years.”
“They’ve found thousands of weaker ones, but this surprisingly bright one had slipped unnoticed,” Onken said.
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He said astronomers now want to know why this black hole is different.
“Has something catastrophic happened?” He said.
“Perhaps two large galaxies crashed into each other, channeling a lot of material into the black hole to feed it.”
A co-author of the research, Associate Professor Christian Wolf, said he did not believe “we will find another like this”.
“We’re pretty sure this record won’t be broken,” he said.
Dr Christopher Onken and PhD candidate Samuel Lai at the National University of Australia. (Jamie Kidston / ANU)
“We’ve basically run out of sky where objects like this could be hidden.”
ANU co-author and researcher Samuel Lai said the discovery is “500 times larger than the black hole in our own galaxy.”
“The orbits of the planets in our solar system would fit within their horizon of events: the boundary of the black hole from which nothing can escape,” he said.