Mind-Blowing Discovery: Astronomers Uncover Black Hole Devouring 3,000 Suns Annually!

Astronomers have discovered a surprising black hole named RACS J0320-35, located 12.8 billion light-years away. This means we’re seeing it just 920 million years after the Big Bang. What’s remarkable is that this black hole weighs about a billion times more than our Sun and shines brighter in X-rays than any other black hole from the universe’s early years.

This black hole is growing faster than what scientists thought possible. Luca Ighina, who is part of the research team, finds it surprising that RACS J0320-35 is expanding at a rate 2.4 times faster than the theoretical limit known as the Eddington limit. This limit is like a speed cap that stops black holes from growing too quickly due to radiation pushing material away. But RACS J0320-35 is breaking that limit, consuming the equivalent of 300 to 3,000 Suns’ worth of material every year—this is the fastest growth rate seen in any black hole that’s more than a billion years old.

Until now, many believed that a black hole could only reach a billion solar masses by starting off very large. However, if RACS J0320-35 has been consistently feeding at such high rates, it may have begun its life smaller, possibly less than 100 solar masses, like black holes formed from dying massive stars. Alberto Moretti, a co-author of the study, emphasizes that this calculation can help us test new ideas about black hole formation.

In addition to its rapid growth, RACS J0320-35 is also producing jets of particles traveling nearly at the speed of light, which is unusual for quasars. Researchers suspect that these jets could be linked to the black hole’s extreme growth rate.

This discovery challenges our previous understanding of how black holes form and evolve. If RACS J0320-35 can indeed grow this quickly, we might not need to rely on rare cosmic conditions to explain the existence of such massive black holes so soon after the Big Bang. It opens possibilities for ordinary black holes to grow rapidly under the right circumstances.

However, key questions remain. Is RACS J0320-35 capable of maintaining this intense growth long-term, or is it experiencing a temporary feeding spree? And how do its powerful jets connect to this rapid growth?

To tackle these mysteries, astronomers plan to continue their observations with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other future telescopes. This study was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, highlighting the evolving landscape of black hole research.

You can read more about this fascinating discovery in the NASA article and the full study.

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Big Bang, Black holes, Solar mass, Space, Sun, universe, X-ray