Huge black hole devours an Earth-size chunk every second
Astronomers have detected the brightest and fastest-growing black hole to have existed in the last 9 billion years. The enormous cosmic entity is 3 billion times more massive than the Sun and swallows up an Earth-size chunk of matter every second. The newly discovered supermassive black hole, known as J1144, is around 500 times as massive as Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. A ring of superhot plasma around the enormous void also emits around 7,000 times more light than our entire galaxy. Australian astronomers discovered the cosmic juggernaut using data from Australian National University’s SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, which aims to map out the entirety of the sky in the Southern Hemisphere. “Astronomers have been hunting for objects like this for more…