Astronomers in Australia have discovered a massive, fast-growing black hole elsewhere in the universe that consumes a lot of things in its environment. Scientists have been searching in vain for these supermassive objects for more than fifty years.
The black hole has a mass of three billion suns. Consume according to different media The equivalent of one Earth every second and shining 7,000 times brighter than all the light from our Milky Way.
The researchers were looking for unusual stars when they encountered the supermassive black hole. The discovery was made using the SkyMapper telescope at an observatory in New South Wales. The discovery was confirmed by the team through a telescope in Cape Town, South Africa.
“What we found is what appears to be the brightest expanding black hole in the last nine billion years of universe history,” said lead researcher Christopher Onken. It is estimated that the object, which has been dubbed J1144, is located somewhat halfway through the universe.
A needle in a haystack
The massive black hole has so far escaped the attention of observatories because it lies beyond our Milky Way, as it were, where there are so many stars that it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
A black hole is a region of space from which nothing – not even particles, not even light – can escape. This is due to the severe distortion of space-time, due to the gravitational force of a colossal mass. Its light comes from a ring of gas, dust, and stars orbiting the black hole.
Astronomers hope this rare discovery will teach scientists how galaxies form.
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