Sidney: Black holes are the densest, most mysterious objects in the universe. These super-compressed objects are millions or billions of times larger than our own Sun, with gravitational pulls so great that not even light can escape.
An international team led by astronomers in Australia has recently discovered a black hole, that can swallow one Earth each second. This black hole is also the fastest-growing black hole of the past nine billion years. It shines 7,000 times brighter than all the light from our own galaxy.
Researchers were looking for unusual stars when they came across a supermassive black hole. It has a mass of three billion suns.
The team led by the Australian National University believes it was obscured by the lights of the Milky Way.
The discovery was made using the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran in New South Wales. The black holes are only visible with space telescopes that have special tools.
To take a more detailed look, the team went to the South African Astronomical Observatory's 1.9-meter telescope in Cape Town.
Christopher Onken from the Australian National University is the study’s lead researcher.
He says astronomers have been searching for these types of objects without success for more than 50 years.
“What we found is what appears to be the most luminous growing black hole in the last nine billion years of the history of the universe," said Onken. "People have been looking for these kinds of objects for almost 60 years and this one escaped its notice probably because it was just a little bit too close to the plane of the Milky Way, where there are so many stars that often it is hard to follow up all of the objects that you might find. And, so, this one had been just outside the range that had been surveyed in the past.”
Black holes are parts of space where the matter has collapsed in on itself.
Their light comes from a ring of gas, dust and stars that circles the black hole, known as an accretion disk.
Astronomers hope this rare find will offer tantalizing clues about the formation of galaxies.