Black holes are eaters of the universe, devouring everything that veers too close – including light itself.
An international team of researchers says they have discovered a supermassive black hole that is eating up the equivalent of one Earth every second.
Scientists have confirmed the newly discovered black hole was the brightest and fastest-growing supermassive black hole of the past 9 billion years (that we know of).
Located in the bright constellation of Centaurus, it is more than 500 times larger than the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own galaxy.
The findings, which are currently under review, were posted last week on the science website arXiv.
The team stumbled across the unusual object while they were hunting for close pairs of binary stars.
They were using the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, between the Central West and North West Slopes regions of New South Wales.
One Response
Hope it not coming our way!