Scientists just revealed the discovery of the most gigantic black hole ever discovered in the early Universe, according to them.
Its mass is 34 billion times that of our Sun, and it absorbs the energy of one Sun per day.
The research led by the National University of Australia (ANU) revealed the size of the Universe's fastest-growing black hole, as well as how much stuff it can swallow.
The 'J2157' black hole was discovered by the same research team in 2018.
The report revealing the properties of the huge black hole was published in the Royal Astronomical Society's Monthly Notices.
According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, this object has a mass 34 billion times that of the Sun and consumes one Sun per day. With a b, that's billion.
The gigantic black hole has an estimated mass of 8,000 times that of Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
"The Milky Way's black hole would have to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy if it wanted to get fat," says Onken.
The object was analysed when the Universe was only 1.2 billion years old, or less than 10% of its current age, making it the most massive black hole ever discovered in the early Universe.
According to Onken, "it is the largest black hole ever measured in this early epoch of the Universe."
The team is now on the lookout for more black holes in the hopes of finding answers to how black holes grow to be so huge so early in the Universe's life.
"When we recognised its quick growth rate, we understood we were dealing with a very huge black hole," explains team member Dr. Fuyan Bian, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
"How much mass black holes can consume is determined by how much mass they already possess. We felt this thing would set a new world record for eating stuff at such a rapid rate. He adds, "And now we know."
The team used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to precisely determine the black hole's mass, which included researchers from the University of Arizona.
"With such a massive black hole, we're also interested in learning more about the galaxy in which it's growing," said Onken.
"Was this galaxy one of the early Universe's behemoths, or did the black hole take up a large portion of its surroundings?" We'll have to delve a little deeper to find out."
A large black hole in the centre of a quasar galaxy is known as J2157. Observations with the equally huge 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii and the 8-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile allowed astronomers to understand more about the cosmic monster.
The quasar's distance as well as its total brightness were determined by astronomers. This allowed them to determine the black hole's size and the amount of matter it could eat from the disc.
The black hole is enormous, with a diameter of almost 200 billion kilometres.
It is so massive that if it were to be substituted with our Sun, it would envelop the entire solar system.
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