Astronomers have discovered the brightest quasar of its kind. Quasars are reportedly as bright as 500 trillion suns and powered by supermassive black holes.
“We have discovered the fastest growing black hole ever known. It has 17 billion solar masses and eats just over one sun a day. This makes it the fastest growing black hole ever known. It will be the brightest object in the universe.” To tell Christian Wolff is an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU) and lead author of the study published on Monday. natural astronomy.
of quasarThis star, named J0529-4351, is so far from Earth that it is said that it took about 12 billion years for its light to reach us. On the other hand, the brightness of its light is more than 500 trillion times that of the sun.
“All this light comes from a hot accretion disk seven light years across, which must be the largest accretion disk in the universe,” said ANU PhD student and co-author Samuel Rai.
7 light years is about 15,000 times the distance from the Sun to the orbit of Neptune.
Co-author and ANU astronomer Christopher Onken said quasars were hidden in plain sight before they were discovered.
“It’s surprising that we didn’t know about it until now, given that we already know about the million or so less impressive quasars that have literally been staring us in the face. ”
He explained that the object first appeared in images from the ESO Schmidt Southern Sky Survey back in 1980, but it wasn’t confirmed as a quasar until decades later.
according to space dot com, the supermassive black hole at the center of a quasar is estimated to be between 17 billion and 19 billion times the mass of the Sun. Each year, it consumes 370 solar masses of gas and dust called acrete.
“Personally, I just like to chase. For a few minutes a day, I can go on a treasure hunt and feel like I was a kid again. And now I’m putting everything I’ve learned since then into action.” ” Wolf said of quasars. ™ discovery.
Image credit: ©GettyImages/Ig0rZh
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributor to Christian Headlines and host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast dedicated to sound doctrine and Biblical truth. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Alliance Theological Seminary.
