Scientists have spotted the brightest and fastest-growing quasar ever seen — a monster black hole that’s devouring a sun’s-worth of material every day. The brightly burning object, named J0529-4351, weighs between 17 billion and 19 billion solar masses and is located 12 billion light-years from Earth — meaning it dates to a time when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old.
Black holes are born when giant stars collapse in on themselves, and they grow by devouring all they encounter — be it gas, dust, stars, planets or other black holes.
Friction can cause the material spiraling into the maws of these gluttonous space-time ruptures to heat up, which emits light that can be detected by telescopes, turning them into so-called active galactic nuclei (AGN). The most extreme AGNs are quasars — supermassive black holes that are billions of times heavier than the sun and shed their gaseous cocoons with light blasts trillions of times more luminous than the brightest stars.
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