Fastest-growing Black Hole Eats About One Sun Per Day!

A new study conducted by an international team of astronomers found that the fastest-growing black hole, J2157 known to humans is 34 billion times the mass of our Sun and is extremely hungry. It eats nearly the equivalent of one Sun every day. The study was published in 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society' and the research was conducted by "The Australian National University."

Dr. Christopher Onken, one of the researchers said that the mass of the black hole is about 8,000 times larger than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. He further added that, "If the black hole of the Milky Way wanted to expand that large, it would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our Galaxy."

Onken said that that how much a black hole can eat depends on how big they are. In this case, the black hole is so big that is why it can live on the diet of one sun a day. The studies say that the black hole is growing 1% every one million years. J2157 was discovered by the team for the first time in 2018. Dr. Onken asserted that the scientists were looking at it at a time when the universe was just 1.2 billion years old, adding that it has been the biggest black hole that weighed in that early period of the universe.

Onken added that "With such an enormous black hole, we're also excited to see what we can learn about the galaxy in which it is growing. Is this galaxy one of the behemoths of the early Universe, or did the black hole just swallow up an extraordinary amount of its surroundings? We'll have to keep digging to figure that out."

Christian Wolf, who found the black hole, said, "This black hole is expanding so quickly that it shines thousands of times brighter than the entire galaxy, because of all the gasses it absorbs every day that cause a lot of friction and heat." According to the study, Fuyan Bian of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), who is also part of the team said that they have used the very large telescope of ESO in Chile to collect data on the mass of the black hole. It is located inside the Holm 15A galaxy, which is 700 million light-years away from Earth.

A year ago, NASA stated that "A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)."