The black hole in the newly discovered quasar SMSS J052915.80-435152.0 (J0529-4351) accretes about 1 solar mass per day on top of its existing mass of 17 billion solar masses.
This image of the exceptional quasar J0529-4351 is from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey DR10. Adjacent M stars are displayed in red.Image credit: Wolf other., doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x.
In 1963, Dutch-born American astronomer Maarten Schmidt identified the first quasar, known as 3C 273. It appeared as a very bright star of magnitude 12, and its redshift suggested that it was one of the most distant objects known in the universe. time.
These two facts suggest an incredibly huge light output, and ever since, newly discovered quasars have impressed with their ability to emit enormous amounts of energy from small regions of the universe. Ta.
This can only be explained by the conversion of gravitational energy into heat and light in a highly viscous accretion disk around a supermassive black hole.
Currently, about 1 million quasars are known, but a few specimens stand out. In 2015, ultraluminous quasar J0100+2802 was confirmed to be a supermassive black hole with 10 billion solar masses.
In 2018, an even brighter object, J2157-3602, was discovered, which contains a supermassive black hole with a mass of 24 billion solar masses.
Its brightness suggests rapid growth, but its existence is difficult to explain. When black holes start from the debris of a star's collapse and grow temporarily, they are not expected to reach appreciable mass in the time between the Big Bang and the black hole era. observation.
The quasar that broke the new record is so far from Earth that it took more than 12 billion years for its light to reach us.
The object, called J0529-4351, was first detected using the 2.3 meter telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory.
Australian National University astronomer Christian Wolff and colleagues then turned to ESO's Very Large Telescope, one of the world's largest telescopes, to confirm the full nature of the black hole and measure its mass. Toward.
“We have discovered the fastest growing black hole ever known. It has a mass of 17 billion suns and eats just over one sun a day. This makes it the fastest growing black hole in the known universe. It will be a bright object,” Dr. Wolf said.
The material drawn into this black hole in the form of a disk emits so much energy that J0529-4351 is more than 500 trillion times brighter than the Sun.
“All this light comes from a hot accretion disk seven light-years in diameter, which must be the largest accretion disk in the universe,” said Dr. Student Samuel Lai.
“Given what we know about many other less impressive black holes, it's surprising that it hasn't been detected before. It was hiding in plain sight,” says the Australian National said Dr. Christopher Onken of the university.
This finding is reported in the following article: paper in diary natural astronomy.
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C.Wolf other. Accretion of solar masses per day by a 17 billion solar mass black hole. Nat Astron, published online on February 19, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x
Source: www.sci.news
