Astronomers have discovered a distant quasar — or active nucleus of a galaxy — that's powered by a feeding supermassive black hole blasting out winds at record-breaking speeds of 30% the speed of light, around 201 million miles (323 million kilometers) per hour. This is the fastest black hole wind seen specifically in ultraviolet wavelengths.
The black hole-powered quasar, known as J2318, has an incredible mass of 1.7 billion times that of the sun and is located around 3 billion light-years away. While that is a pretty typical mass for a supermassive black hole, the speed of these winds is anything but typical, according to team member and York University researcher Patrick Hall.
