A team of astronomers has made an exciting discovery in Cape Canaveral, Florida. They have found a quasar that could potentially be the most luminous object in existence. What makes this quasar unique is the incredibly rapid growth of its central black hole, which consumes the equivalent of one solar mass every day.

The quasar that holds the record for brightness is 500 trillion times more luminous than our sun. According to a team led by Australian researchers, the black hole that fuels this distant quasar is over 17 billion times larger than our sun. This was reported in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday.

Although the quasar appears as a small dot in images, scientists imagine it to be an intense and dangerous location.

The disk that encircles the black hole of a quasar, consisting of luminous swirling gas and other material from consumed stars, is comparable to a celestial hurricane.

According to an email from lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University, this particular quasar is the most intense location known in the entire universe.

In 1980, the European Southern Observatory discovered an object called J0529-4351 during a survey of the sky. At the time, it was believed to be a star. However, it was only last year that it was recognized as a quasar, which is the highly energetic and bright center of a galaxy. This conclusion was confirmed by telescopic observations from Australia and the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, not involved in the study, stated via email that what makes this quasar so intriguing is that it was overlooked and mistakenly labeled as a star.

Recent studies and computational simulations have revealed that the quasar is consuming an amount of matter equivalent to 370 suns annually, approximately one per day. The research team also found that the black hole’s mass is estimated to be 17 to 19 billion times that of our sun. Further investigations are necessary to fully comprehend its rate of growth.

The quasar has existed since the early stages of the universe and is located 12 billion light-years away. One light-year is equivalent to 5.8 trillion miles.

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Source: wral.com