This is an artist’s illustration of a recently discovered quasar, which scientists have described as possibly the brightest object in the Universe.
It is so bright that for a long time astronomers mistook it for a star. Now it has been confirmed that this is an active galactic nucleus at the initial stage of development, in which a supermassive black hole is absorbing surrounding matter. As a result, a huge amount of energy is generated.
Observations were carried out, in particular, using telescopes in Australia and the Atacama Desert in Chile. As it turned out, the quasar absorbs the equivalent of 370 stars per year. That is, about one per day.
Moreover, the brighter the quasar, the faster its black hole grows. And the mass of this black hole is 17 billion times more than the Sun.
The quasar is located 12 billion light years away from us. It is 10 thousand times brighter than our Milky Way galaxy.
Quasars provide insight into how our own galaxy formed, particularly what it was like in its early stages.
Scientists now know that most galaxies contain very massive black holes at their centers. But they do not know exactly how they were formed and how they increased their matter. They suggest that perhaps all galaxies form around supermassive black holes.
