Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery of a supermassive black hole that radiates like hundreds of millions of Suns. This bright object is located in a distant galaxy with a massive black hole at its center. The discovery, made by researchers at the Australian National University, has revealed that this giant is the brightest object observed so far, with its brightness caused by matter falling into the hole and heating up before disappearing into blackness.
The gap between the black hole and its accretion disk is growing at an unprecedented rate and has a mass equivalent to about 17 billion Suns. This new discovery has given scientists valuable insights into the mysterious nature of quasars, which are extremely bright objects caused by matter accretion discs around black holes.
The radiation emitted by this giant is hundreds of trillions of times brighter than that of the Sun. The strength and width of the object’s light spectral lines indicate a very hot radiation source with a temperature of millions of degrees. Additionally, gas is moving at high speeds in the strong gravitational field created by the massive black hole.
The quasar J0529-4351 is very distant, with observed radiation originating more than 12 billion years ago when the universe was about 1.8 billion years old. The expansion of the universe complicates measuring distances, making it more accurate to refer to the light’s origin as more than 12 billion years ago.
