Scientists believe that this is the fastest growing black hole in our universe.
An example of a bright supermassive black hole. Image of NASA.
The researchers believe that this is the fastest growing black hole that was ever found in the observed universe. It was discovered with the help of three different instruments: the satellite of Gaia of the European Space Agency, observations in the observatory and NASA satellite. The full text of the study is only planned to be published, but the preliminary record has already appeared on the arXiv website.
According to observations of scientists, the size of J2157-3602 is about 20 billion suns and it increases by 1% every million years. This means that approximately every two days a black hole absorbs a mass of matter equivalent to the Sun.
The speed of the hole growth simultaneously makes it the brightest object of this kind: it glows brighter than the whole galaxy.
If such a monster were located in the center of the Milky Way, then in the sky it would be 10 times brighter than the full Moon. It would seem an incredibly bright star that would eclipse all the other stars.
Scientists noted that if J2157-3602 were in Milky Way, this would make life on Earth impossible because of the huge flux of X-rays emanating from the black hole.