Australian astronomers have discovered that a giant ‘hungry’ black hole in a distant galaxy ‘eats’ a star the size of our sun every day. It is therefore the fastest growing black hole in the universe.
The hole, called J2157, is 34 billion times the size of our Sun and 8,000 times larger than the black hole in the center of our Milky Way, Sagittarius A *, the discoverers write in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
If Sagittarius A * was to grow as big as J2157, it would need to absorb about two thirds of all stars in the Milky Way.
This also raises questions about the galaxy that J2157 is at the center of: could the black hole get so big because this galaxy is so big? Or is there little left of the system, because J2157 has already eaten so much of it?
J2157 was first described in 2018 and was discovered with the space telescopes of the American space agency NASA and its European counterpart ESA, as well as from an Australian observatory. The hole is one of the brightest luminous center of a galaxy known in the universe.
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