Finding quasars requires precise observational data
Astronomers may have found the universe's brightest object - a quasar emitting light 500 trillion times stronger than our Sun! These behemoths, powered by supermassive black holes, are swirling torrents of superheated gas. According to the European Southern Observatory, this specific quasar is fueled by the fastest-growing black hole ever observed, consuming a sun's worth of material daily.
What's more interesting is that the object was hiding in plain sight for several decades before it was discovered, the observatory said. It added that it was so bright it was initially classified as a star not too far from Earth.
The observatory said the black hole powering this record-breaking quasar is growing in mass by the equivalent of one Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole discovered to date. Black holes driving quasars collect matter from their surroundings in a process so energetic it emits vast amounts of light.
"We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion Suns and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe," says Christian Wolf, an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU) and lead author of the study published today in Nature Astronomy. The quasar, called J0529-4351, is so far away from Earth that its light took over 12 billion years to reach us.
Finding quasars requires precise observational data from large areas of the sky. The resulting datasets are so large, that researchers often use machine-learning models to analyse them and tell quasars apart from other celestial objects.
"Quasars are still rare objects, so any time we find one, they are like gemstones in a lot of dirt we have been turning over," Mr Wolf told The Washington Post.
Sharing why the study of quasars is important because "most large galaxies contain a massive black hole at their centre, and they have affected the development of their host galaxies," Mr Wolf said.
The lead author said the object was "a giant hurricane with the black hole in the eye of the storm," or "the biggest gates to hell we have found anywhere in the universe."
"We need to assume that this quasar is the most violent place that we know in the Universe because the visible accretion disc is 7 light-years across," he told the Washington Post. This means you could expect burning hot temperatures, strong magnetic fields and wind speeds ranging from thousands of miles per second blasting across the outer edge, and "lightning bolts of cosmic size discharging everywhere."