This monstrous black hole "eats" the equivalent of the mass of our Sun every day

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This monstrous black hole 'eats' the equivalent of the mass of our Sun every day
This Monstrous Black Hole "eats" The Equivalent Of The Mass

This monstrous black hole 'eats' the equivalent of the mass of our Sun every day

A supermassive black hole 34 billion times the mass of the Sun, according to a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, devours almost the equivalent of the mass of our star every day. This makes it the fastest-growing cosmic monster we know of in the entire universe.

The mass of the black hole is also about 8,000 times larger than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way“, underlines astronomer Christopher Onken of the Australian National University in Australia. The discovery of the giant in question was first announced in 2018; the latter feeds a quasar in the centre of a galaxy called SMSS J215728.21-360215.1 (in short J2157) in the primordial universe, billions of light-years away.

According to experts, the black hole would have a Schwarzschild radius – the radius of its event horizon – of approximately 670 astronomical units (AU); over five times larger than the Solar System. J2157 * is not the most massive black hole ever discovered: this record – for now – belongs to TON 618, with 66 billion solar masses.

However, J2157 * seems to be special: it has existed since the Universe was less than 10% of its current age. Not only do we not know how it was formed and how it grew, but we don’t know how black holes can grow so soon after the Big Bang. Recent studies, however, have revealed that quasars that host supermassive black holes not only existed in the early universe but appeared to be quite common.

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This discovery is a great challenge for our cosmological models because we know that the formation of such an object should take a long time and, above all, a lot of matter.