Incredible image shows fastest growing supermassive black hole ever detected
MEET the hungriest thing in the universe — a supermassive black hole that swallows the mass of a sun every day.
Its enormous appetite also means it is piling on weight, making it the fastest-growing black hole yet detected.
The object, 12 billion light years from Earth, burns up so much matter it is also the brightest thing astronomers have found to date.
Called a quasar — the remnants of a collapsing galaxy — it has been named J0529-4351 and is 17 billion times heavier and 500 trillion times brighter than our own sun.
But the Australian astronomers who spotted it were astonished no one had noticed it before.
Christian Wolf, astronomer at the Australian National University said: “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.”
One said: “We already know about a million less impressive quasars.
“It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”