Australian astronomers have discovered a massive, fast-growing black hole elsewhere in the universe that is gobbling up everything in its surroundings. Scientists have been searching unsuccessfully for these supermassive objects for more than fifty years.
The black hole, with the mass of three billion suns, consumed in different media the equivalent of one Earth every second and shines 7,000 times brighter than all the light in our own Milky Way.
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.
Lead researcher Christopher Onken said: “What we have found is what appears to be the brightest expanding black hole in the last nine billion years in the history of the universe.” He estimates that the object, which has been given the name of J1144, is located more or less halfway through our universe.
Needle in a haystack
The huge black hole has so far escaped the notice of observatories because it sits behind our Milky Way, so to speak, where there are so many stars it’s like looking for a needle in a boot. hay.
A black hole is a region of space from which nothing – no particle, not even light – can escape. This is due to an extreme distortion of spacetime, due to the gravitational pull of huge mass. Their light comes from a ring of gas, dust and stars orbiting the black hole.
Astronomers hope this rare discovery will teach scientists about the formation of galaxies.
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