The brightest known object ever seen in the universe has been detected by scientists who claim the discovery was hiding in plain sight.
Researchers said they came across the massive quasar after studying space, looking specifically at the fastest growing black hole they had ever seen, and stumbled across the quasar while doing that work.
The scientists, based in Australia, said the quasar mass is about 17 billion times bigger than our solar system’s Sun, and it devours the equivalent of a sun a day.
The light from the celestial object travelled for more than 12 billion years to reach Earth and it is officially the brightest known object to ever be found in our universe.
It was found by Australian National University scientists who said they first spotted it using a 2.3-metre telescope at the university’s NSW Siding Spring Observatory in Coonabarabran. They then confirmed the find using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
The lead author of the findings, Christian Wolf, said it was the most luminous known object in the universe and that its incredible rate of growth meant a “huge release of light and heat” – and that he doubted its record would ever be beaten.
He said: “It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000C, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second.
“This storm cell is seven light years across, which is 50 per cent more than the distance from our solar system to the next star in the galaxy, Alpha Centauri.”
Dr Jonny Pierce, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, previously said: “It’s an area that scientists around the world are keen to learn more about – one of the main scientific motivations for Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope was to study the earliest galaxies in the universe, and Webb is capable of detecting light from even the most distant quasars, emitted nearly 13 billion years ago.
“Quasars play a key role in our understanding of the history of the universe and possibly also the future of the Milky Way.”
What is a quasar?
Quasars – the brightest and most powerful objects in the universe – are ignited when galaxies collide. These celestial objects can be a trillion times brighter than the Sun, according to Nasa. Although first discovered 60 years ago, quasars have remained a mystery because it was unclear how such powerful activity could be generated.
Scientists led by the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire analysed data from the Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma. They found what they describe as “the presence of distorted structures” in the galaxies that contain quasars.
Professor Clive Tadhunter from the University of Sheffield’s department of physics and astronomy, said: “Quasars are one of the most extreme phenomena in the universe, and what we see is likely to represent the future of our own Milky Way galaxy when it collides with the Andromeda galaxy in about five billion years.
“It’s exciting to observe these events and finally understand why they occur – but thankfully Earth won’t be anywhere near one of these apocalyptic episodes for quite some time.”
At the centre of most galaxies are thought to be supermassive black holes – with masses at millions of times the mass of the Sun.
These galaxies also contain substantial amounts of gas that are out of reach of the black holes.
When galaxies collide, the gases are driven towards the black hole where they are then consumed, releasing “extraordinary amounts of energy in the form of radiation, resulting in the characteristic quasar brilliance”.
