Fast-growing black hole discovered - it swallows an Earth every second
Created: 06/15/2022, 03:00 p.m
Image of another black hole in our Milky Way.
© EHT collaboration/dpa
It grows extremely fast.
Every second it swallows the mass of an earth.
Astronomers say they have discovered a previously unknown black hole.
Sydney - An international team of astronomers has discovered an extremely fast-growing black hole.
The black hole has the mass of three billion suns, swallowing the equivalent of an Earth every second.
It shines 7,000 times brighter than all the light from our own galaxy, researchers led by astronomers from the Australian National University (ANU) in the Australian capital Canberra report on Wednesday.
Other black holes of a comparable size would have stopped growing at this rate billions of years ago, the statement said.
The research results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Black hole visible to amateur astronomers with a good telescope
The black hole is easy to see with a decent telescope in a dark backyard because of its size and visual magnitude of 14.5, according to astronomers.
"It's 500 times larger than the black hole in our own galaxy," said co-author and ANU PhD student Samuel Lai.
How did this black hole form?
ANU lead researcher Christopher Onken called the discovery a "very big, unexpected needle in a haystack".
Astronomers have been looking for objects like this in the sky for more than 50 years.
Thousands of weaker ones have been found, "but this amazingly bright one slipped through unnoticed."
How could this black hole in space reach such a mass?
There is already a theory: "Maybe two large galaxies collided and threw a lot of material at the black hole to feed it," Onken suspects.
black holes
Black holes are hard to find, according to NASA.
They have such strong gravity that light cannot escape them, so scientists have to rely on clues from their surroundings to find them.
When a star weighing more than 20 times the Sun runs out of fuel, it collapses into a black hole.
Scientists estimate that there are tens of millions of these black holes around the Milky Way, but so far we've only identified a few dozen.
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Black holes in space are fascinating
Black holes are a mystery to science.
At the center of the Milky Way is a black hole called
Sagittarius A*
.
According to measurements, the black hole has more than four million times the mass of our sun and due to its enormous
density
it attracts everything that comes too close.
A theory circulated on the web that our universe itself could be a black hole.
(dpa/ml)