Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery: a new black hole – the most frozen of its kind to date. The space giant devours roughly the mass of a sun each day. So far, no black hole has been discovered that is growing so quickly.
Although it is almost impossible to use scales to describe the extent of J2157, as astronomers call the black hole, Christopher Onken, astronomer at the Australian National University in Canberra, tries to do the following: The black hole that was discovered in 2019 is 8000 times larger than the central black hole found in the Milky Way. In order for the black hole in our galaxy to assume such dimensions, it would have to devour two thirds of all stars.
As heavy as 34 billion suns: fastest growing black hole discovered
Although the astronomers knew that sooner or later they would be dealing with black holes of this size, this discovery did offer some surprises. According to the classification, J2157 is no ordinary black hole: the giant with the hunger for world is classified as a so-called “quasar”. This means giant luminous objects that are driven by black holes and have more than a billion times the mass of the sun. J2157 is roughly as heavy as 34 billion suns.
The enormous luminosity of quasars arises from the fact that particles of dust and gas, at the edge of the black hole, are accelerated to the speed of light. Thus, the black hole itself can also be viewed as a kind of particle accelerator. If J2157 were to sit in the Milky Way, it would shine ten times brighter than the moon. The amount of X-rays that are released would make life on Earth impossible.
However, J2157 will not be dangerous because the black hole is around 12 billion light years away. It is interesting, however, that the information that we have from the record giant is already out of date: Since the measured values first have to cover this incredible distance before they finally reach the astronomers, we can currently only determine the black hole in its state 1,2 See billions of years after the Big Bang. So it could well be that it is now even more gigantic. How it has been growing so quickly since its discovery in 2019 is not yet clear to the researchers.
Black holes remain a mystery for scientists: Researchers in London recently received a “heartbeat” from a well-known black hole.
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