We already know the mass of the fastest growing black hole in the universe. Thanks to research conducted by a team of astronomers from the Australian National University, we also know how fast it devours the surrounding matter.
According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his associates, the most voracious black hole in the universe has a mass … 34 billion times the mass of the Sun and every day it devours a mass comparable to that of the Sun.
The mass of this black hole is 8,000 times the mass of the supermassive black hole inside our galaxy
– says Onken.
If the black hole inside the Milky Way wanted to reach such a mass, it would have to absorb two-thirds of all stars in our galaxy.
The giant black hole described here – cataloged under number J2157 – was discovered in 2018.
And all this in a very early universe
We must remember that on Earth we observe it as it was when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, which is less than 10 percent. your current age
– adds Onken.
J2157 is the largest black hole whose mass was measured at this stage in the history of the universe.
How it has grown to such astronomical proportions remains a mystery. Astronomers are now actively looking for more such monsters in the early universe to learn about them a little more.
Only a big one can eat so much
‘We knew that its mass must be huge as soon as we determined how quickly it absorbs matter,’ says Dr. Fuyan Bian, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory. How fast a black hole can grow is directly related to its size. So to absorb one star a day, the black hole we were investigating had to be huge. Now we know how much.
University of Arizona researchers used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) belonging to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to investigate the characteristics of the black hole.
“We are looking forward to the moment when we learn more about the galaxy with such a large black hole,” adds Dr. Onken. We don’t know if the massive black hole is in a really massive galaxy or whether the galaxy was normal and the black hole absorbed a large part of it. This is what we will have to find out.
The results of the study were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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