Astronomers have discovered the brightest object in the universe: a “hellish” black hole that devours a star a day.
Described as “the most hellish place in the universe,” the black hole is 12 billion light years away and has a mass about 17 billion times that of our solar system’s sun.
Due to their immense gravitational pull, black holes grow in mass by capturing nearby material, be it stars, planets, and even other black holes.
The matter that is attracted to this black hole, known as J0529-4351, forms a huge disk that measures seven light years in diameter.
That’s about 15,000 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune.
All galaxies have a supermassive black hole at their core. When the flow of gas and dust into this black hole reaches a certain level, the event can cause the formation of a “quasar,” an extremely bright region as material rotates around the black hole. Pictured is an artist’s impression of the record-breaking quasar J0529-4351.
J0529-4351 was identified by a team from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, led by Associate Professor Christian Wolf.
“Hell has been imagined as a place that is extremely uncomfortable, hot, and hostile to the corporeal forms of human life,” he said.
“Thanks to a huge astronomical study of the entire sky, we have discovered what could be the most hellish place in the universe.”
According to Professor Wolf, there is “no need to be afraid” of a black hole like this, largely because it is 12 billion light years away.
“The light from this monster has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us, which means it would have stopped growing a long time ago,” he said.
Considering that the universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old, the light we now detect from the black hole is a snapshot of the universe in its “adolescent” phase.
“In the adolescent universe, matter moved chaotically and fed hungry black holes,” explained the academic.
«Today, stars move orderly at safe distances and rarely fall into black holes.
“In the nearby universe we see that supermassive black holes today are mostly sleeping giants.”
When the flow of gas and dust into this black hole reaches a certain level, the event can cause the formation of a “quasar,” an extremely bright region as material rotates around the black hole. This image shows a wide field of the region around quasar J0529-4351.
Famous for being an inspiration for science fiction films like ‘Event Horizon’, black holes are regions of space-time where the pull of gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.
They act as intense gravity sources that suck in surrounding dust and gas, as well as planets and even other black holes.
They are often described as “destructive monsters” because they tear apart stars, consume anything that gets too close, and hold light captive.
This black hole, the fastest-growing black hole ever recorded, was first detected using a 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory, near the town of Coonabarabran, about 300 meters away. miles from Sydney.
The research team then used one of the world’s largest telescopes, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, to confirm the full nature of the black hole and measure its mass.
When the flow of gas and dust into this black hole reaches a certain level, the event can cause the formation of a “quasar,” an extremely bright region as material rotates around the black hole.
This black hole was first detected using a 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, Australia (pictured).
Black holes act as intense sources of gravity that suck in surrounding dust and gas, as well as planets and even other black holes (artistic rendering)
Researchers say this black hole is surrounded by the largest and brightest disk of captive matter ever discovered.
It is the brightest object found so far in the universe: 500 billion times brighter than our sun.
“Such an astonishing amount of energy can only be released if the black hole consumes about a sun of material every day,” Professor Wolf said.
As for why this has only been detected now, considering it’s the brightest thing in the universe, it’s because the universe is “full of bright black holes.”
“The world’s telescopes produce so much data that astronomers use sophisticated machine learning tools to examine it all,” said the expert.
“Machine learning, by its nature, tends to find things similar to what has been found before.
“This makes machine learning great at finding run-of-the-mill accretion disks around black holes (about a million have been detected so far), but not so good at detecting rare outliers like J0529-4351.”
The study has been published in Nature Astronomy.