Black holes are the cosmic gluttons, devouring even light when it comes too close to them. Researchers from around the world have now discovered a supermassive black hole that consumes the mass of one Earth per second.
The newly discovered monster was revealed to be the brightest and fastest-growing supermassive black hole in the previous nine billion years, according to observations of other light objects that had been there for billions of years (that we know of).
The supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy is more than 500 times smaller than this brilliant cosmic monster, which is located in the constellation Centaurus.
The findings were released last week in a physics academic journal and are currently being reviewed.
Astronomer Christopher Onken, the study’s lead author, who works at the Australian National University, stated that searches for objects of this nature had been ongoing since the 1960s.
And this one seems to have eluded all of our earlier searches for it, somehow.
The researchers discovered the peculiar object while looking for neighboring binary stars, or stars that orbit the same mass center, in the Milky Way.
They were utilizing the SkyMapper telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory, which is close to Coonabarabran and situated between the Central West and North West Slopes regions of New South Wales.
Adrian Lucy, a PhD student at Columbia University in New York, identified more than 200 potential binary star candidates, but something seemed off about them, in Dr. Onken’s opinion.
One of them turned out to be unlike a binary system in every way.
To get a closer look at the peculiar object, the crew travelled to Cape Town’s South African Astronomical Observatory’s 1,9-meter telescope.
Here, they were able to examine the different wavelengths of light emitted by SMSS J114447.77-430859.3, or J1144 for short.
“You really see the detailed fingerprints of what’s making up these objects,” Dr Onken said.
And it did not resemble a giant star in any way.
Instead, the object featured brilliant lines showing that gas was flowing very quickly, indicating that it was propelled by a supermassive black hole.
Several of the brightest objects in the sky, quasars, are powered by supermassive black holes, which have a mass of millions or billions of Suns.
From Earth, these brilliant objects resemble stars, but their light originates from the accretion disc, a ring of gas, dust, and stars that swirls around the black hole.
This material becomes extremely hot and emits dazzling light as it is drawn towards the black hole’s gaping maw by its powerful gravitational pull.
According to Dr. Onken, the gas is “kind of funneling down into a pancake shape, and that material then warms up through friction.”
The material accelerates as it nears the event horizon of a black hole, the region from which not even light can escape, releasing its potential energy like a ball rolling down a hill.
All of that material eventually enters the black hole past the event horizon, increasing the black hole’s mass in the process.
Dr. Onken and his colleagues were able to determine the supermassive black hole’s mass to be three billion Suns thanks to this brilliant, rapidly moving cloud of gas.
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, has a mass of about 4 million Suns.
J1144 was also far farther away and brighter than other objects of the same age, although being fainter than other quasars detected in the past 60 years.
These are really unexpected discoveries, so that was very thrilling, according to Dr. Onken.
Additionally, by examining J1144’s appearance in older data sets, the researchers examined J1144’s brightness over the preceding 45 years.
They discovered that the brightness of the enormous quasar remained constant throughout time, suggesting that its black hole was continually consuming gas and everything else that came its way.
Michael Cowley, an astronomer at the Queensland University of Technology, said that the supermassive black hole’s size indicated that it was most likely related with a huge galaxy.
“Usually you’ll find that the more massive the black hole, the more massive the galaxy is as well,” said Dr Cowley, who was not involved in the study.
This quasar’s brightness is about 7,000 times brighter than all of the light in the Milky Way, making it visible from your backyard with the right telescope.
Dr. Onken recommended a telescope with a diameter of 30 to 40 centimetres and a camera capable of lengthy exposures.J1144 is situated in the sky approximately north-west of the Southern Cross, emanating from the constellation Centaurus.
“It’s just right overhead at sunset at this time of year,” Dr Onken said.
