Fastest-Growing Black Hole ever Discovered

During the last nine billion years, no black hole has grown as fast as this one. It consumes mass equivalent to one Earth per second.

This study led by astronomers at The Australian National University (ANU) surprisingly, found this black hole has a mass nearly 3 billion times that of the Sun and shines 7000 times brighter than the light of our Milky Way, making it visible to well-equipped backyard astronomers. This gigantic Black hole has a magnitude of 14.5. Billions of years ago, black holes of similar size stopped growing at such a fast rate. A good telescope in a very dark backyard can easily see it with this luminosity.

"It is 500 times bigger than the black hole in our galaxy. The orbits of the planets in our solar system would all fit inside its event horizon-the black hole's boundary from which nothing can escape," said co-author and ANU PhD researcher Samuel Lai.

Although you should never say never, I don't believe that a black hole like this will ever be found again. This record is unlikely to be broken. Christian Wolf, a co-author of the paper, said, "We've run out of the sky where objects like this might hide. The team calls this discovery, a very large, unexpected needle in the haystack, they even call it, an outlier.

A census of bright quasars has been compiled in response to the discovery. Hundreds of new quasar candidates await analysis and confirmation or rejection. The team has already confirmed 80 new quasars.

In the relatively recent Universe, the astronomical community is close to having a complete list of bright quasars. Due to quasars' brightness, researchers can analyze their light to learn more about the tenuous gas between galaxies, the author said.

By observing the flow of gas around our Milky Way Galaxy, we can see how the space around us moves in three dimensions.