An Australian team has discovered a record-breaking gigantic black hole that can swallow the mass of our sun in a single day, emitting flashes of light 500 trillion times brighter than the star of the day.
“This is the brightest object in the known universe,” said Christian Wolf, associate professor at the Australian National University and lead author of the study, in a statement released on Tuesday (Monday in Quebec).
Born in the youth of the universe, the cosmic monster whose light took some 12 billion years to reach us has dizzying properties, the scale of which is almost impossible to comprehend.
This means that the black hole has a mass that is approximately 17 billion times the mass of the Sun and, according to NASA, is around 330,000 times heavier than the Earth, which itself already weighs almost 5.972 quadrillion kilograms.
For comparison: the so-called “supermassive” black hole that occupies the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, weighs “only” 4.3 million times heavier than the Sun.
The black hole is surrounded by a gigantic mass of rotating matter and debris, waiting to be swallowed forever. This disk spans about seven light-years, or almost one and a half times the distance that separates the Sun from its nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri.
“During the universe’s youth, matter expanded chaotically, feeding hungry black holes. Today, stars move in an orderly manner and rarely enter black holes,” explained Professor Rachel Wester from the University of Melbourne, who was involved in the research.
It wouldn't be easy to be near this anomaly in the universe. Matter can reach a temperature of 10,000°C in its accretion disk and produce cosmic winds so fast that they would circle the world in a single second.
As a bonus, researchers estimate that the quasar – as the radiation from supermassive black holes is called – can produce light bursts that are up to 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun.
As bright as it is, the celestial object was discovered using a 2.3-meter telescope in Australia, but its presence had to be confirmed by the VLT (Very Large Telescope), one of the largest in the world.
“It is a surprise that it has remained undetected until today. […] It was hiding right in front of us,” enthused the study’s co-author, Doctor of Astronomy Christopher Onken.