Astronomers have identified a supermassive black hole that absorbs the equivalent of one sun per day, at the heart of the most luminous quasar ever observed, according to a study published in the scientific journal Nature. “We have discovered the fastest growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion suns and “eats” just over one sun per day,” Christian Wolf, an astronomer at the Australian National University (ANU) and lead author of the study, said in a statement. of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Invisible by definition, a supermassive black hole illuminates the core of the galaxy that shelters it through its activity. This nucleus is called a quasar, and the one observed by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in Chile, is “the brightest known object in the Universe”, according to Christian Wolf. Its light took 12 billion years to reach the VLT instruments, which allows us to date its existence to the primitive epoch of the Universe – 13.8 billion years old.
The light of J0529-4351, as it was named, had been detected in the 1980s, recalls the study published Monday February 19. But an automatic analysis of data from the Gaia satellite, which maps the galaxy, had likened it to a very luminous star.
Researchers using the Siding Spring Observatory, in Australia, and then the VLT’s X-shooter instrument, identified it last year as indeed being a quasar.
Light equivalent to that of over 500 billion suns
The supermassive black hole it houses attracts a colossal amount of matter, accelerated to no less rapid speeds, emitting light equivalent to that of more than 500 billion suns, according to the ESO press release.
The existence of such a massive and luminous object in the early universe “is difficult to explain,” notes the study, which recalls the discovery of similar quasars in recent years. Their existence each time assumes the rapid growth of a supermassive black hole, which the theory still has difficulty describing.
A black hole is supposed to be born following the explosion of a star at the end of its life, whose core then collapses in on itself. It can grow by feeding on the surrounding matter, attracted by its gravitational field.
Scientists are wondering about the process at work that allows a black hole to become supermassive in a relatively short time in the young Universe.
