Scientists have discovered the fastest-growing black hole in the last 9 billion years. The black hole, which sends multi-wavelength light blazing across the universe, shines 7,000 times brighter than the entire Milky Way galaxy. Due to this, it is also known as a quasar. For those who don’t know, quasars are one of the brightest objects in the universe. When supermassive black holes emit matter at a high rate, the end result is a quasar. Scientists, who have analysed its properties, have named it SMSS J114447.77-430859.3 (J1144 for short).
As per the analysis, light from the black hole has travelled almost 7 billion years to reach Earth. The mass of this supermassive black hole is around 2.6 billion times the mass of the Sun. In fact, material equivalent to the mass of Earth falls into this black hole every second.
The team’s research has been submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. We would like to add that this black hole went unnoticed by scientists to date. As the position is concerned, it sits 18 degrees above the galactic plane. Whereas, in the previous surveys, it was found that the position is 20 degrees above the Milky Way disk.
Astronomer Christopher Onken from the Australian National University said, “Astronomers have been hunting for objects like this for more than 50 years. They have found thousands of fainter ones, but this astonishingly bright one had slipped through unnoticed.”
According to Onken and his team, this black hole is a “very large, unexpected needle in the haystack”.
Professor Christian Wolf, who is a co-author, said, “We are fairly confident this record will not be broken. We have essentially run out of the sky where objects like this could be hiding.”
As a result of this discovery, scientists are more enthusiastic to hunt down other bright quasars. Right now, there are 80 new quasars as confirmed by the team of scientists.