(ORDO NEWS) — Astronomers accidentally discovered a supermassive black hole that is growing so fast that it “shines” 7,000 times brighter than our Milky Way galaxy.
Every second, this insatiable gravitational “monster”, designated SMSS J114447.77-430859.3 (hereinafter referred to as J1144), absorbs an amount of matter, the mass of which is equivalent to the mass of the Earth.
This is the fastest growing black hole in the last 9 billion years, according to astronomers.
Its activity is so frenetic that it is a source of multi-wavelength light, and this makes J1144 a so-called quasar.
Quasars are the brightest single objects in the known Universe, and their off-scale brightness is ensured by the fact that a supermassive black hole accretes the surrounding matter at a tremendous speed, which spirals into its bowels like water into a sink drain.
Observations showed that the light emitted by J1144 traveled about seven billion light-years before reaching Earth.
In addition, it was found that the mass of the black hole underlying the quasar is about 2.6 billion times the mass of our Sun, and 605 times the mass of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A *, which is at the center of the Milky Way.
Object J1144 went unnoticed for a long time for the reason that it is 18 degrees above the plane of the Milky Way. Previous surveys of the sky literally missed this “monster” from sight.
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