Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany have discovered the brightest quasar in space. It is located 12 billion light years from our planet and shines like 500 trillion suns. The research was published in the official gazette Web site scientific institution.
Quasars are regions of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies surrounded by gas and dust. The immense gravity of black holes causes surrounding matter to glow brightly.
The new object was named J0529-4351. The supermassive black hole at its center is 17-19 billion times more massive than our Sun. It absorbs gas and dust equivalent to 370 solar masses each year.
“We discovered the fastest growing black hole known today. It has a mass of 17 billion solar masses and consumes slightly more sun per day,” said team leader Christian Wolf.
J0529-4351’s light comes from a massive accretion disk feeding a supermassive black hole, which the team estimates is about seven light-years in diameter. This means that covering such a distance would be equivalent to traveling between the Earth and the Sun approximately 45 thousand times.
The team believes that the supermassive black hole at the center of the quasar is feeding near the so-called Eddington limit, or that the radiation it emits must push gas and dust outwards, compensating for the rate at which it absorbs matter. .
To confirm the hypothesis, astronomers plan to use the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
Previous scientists I learnedwhat came first; black holes or galaxies.