Scientists Find Monster Black Hole Bigger Than Milky Way


In what seems to be a shocking discovery, astronomers have discovered a massive black hole that is bigger than the Milky Way. Scientists further say that the black hole is fastest growing and are calling it a ‘monster with an appetite’ as the black hole’s gravity can devour mass that is equivalent to the Sun, every two days.

Dr. Christian Wolf, researcher at the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, said that the black hole is growing so fast that it is shining thousand times more brightly than the entire galaxy.

“The heat radiation from the matter falling into the black hole, which is the light we see, is a few thousand times brighter than our own Milky Way galaxy,” he added.

The new black hole, called as quasar, was discovered by the researchers at ANU when the telescope, called as the Skymapper, detected the object that could be of potential interest. The researchers then used the data from European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia satellite to determine the distance of the black hole from Earth.

Their observations helped them find that the light emitted from this massive black hole took more than 12 billion years to reach the Earth and further learn that it is the brightest black hole that can be seen in visual or ultraviolet light. The researchers said that it is very rare to find black holes of this size and also added that they have been looking for them since months with the help of the Skymapper telescope.

Wolf said that ESA’s Gaia satellite which measures and detects even tiny motions of the celestial objects helped them in finding this black hole and that they are still unaware how this one grew so big and so quickly in the very early days of the Universe and noted that the researchers are clearly perplexed about its rapid growth and added that the existence of this black hole puts many questions on the established science on black holes.

He said that from this recent discovery, it is clear that the black holes can grow much faster than the speed limit but still do not know how it works out. He supposed that there might be a way that is still unknown to us to make 5000 solar mass black holes that are very close to the time of Big Bang.

Wolf said that the discovery of these black holes will help scientists in further studying the formation of elements and will also shed new light on the Big Bang theory.