Out there in the universe, there’s a black hole swallowing mass equivalent to the size of our sun every day. Researchers believe it is at the center of a record-breaking quasar.
“It’s a surprise it remained undetected until now, given what we know about many other less impressive black holes,” said Dr. Christopher Onken, co-author of a paper on the discovery. “It was hiding in plain sight.”
Inside of quasars – a subclass of active galactic nuclei per ESA/Hubble – gas and dust fall into supermassive black holes, which have such strong gravity that not even light can escape them. As this occurs, they emit electromagnetic radiation.
Scientists from Australian National University published a paper this week on the discovery of J0529−4351 quasar. They said it is the most luminous quasar out of approximately 1 million in the known universe. Its black hole is also the fastest growing one in the universe.
Audacy also reported on the brightness of the object this week.
“If the quasar is not strongly gravitationally lensed, then its broad-line region is expected to have the largest physical and angular diameter occurring in the Universe and this will allow the Very Large Telescope Interferometer to image its rotation and measure its black-hole mass directly,” said the researchers.
What researchers already know is that the black hole is sucking more in to its 17-solar mass size. Despite its rare size and luminosity, the scientists said it was difficult to find J0529−4351.
“Finding rare and exceptionally bright quasars such as J0529−4351 does not require large telescopes, but is instead a needle-in-the-haystack problem that needs precise data with discriminative power across large areas of sky. Such objects are often hiding in plain sight and are mistaken for stars,” they said.
Measurements of this quasar and black hole are expected to be an important test regarding the sizes of these features and the relationship between luminosity and size, per their study published in the Nature Astronomy journal.