What’s the story
A supermassive black hole, SMSS J052915.80-435152.0 (or J0529), is belching out gas at record speeds of up to 10,000km per second.
The discovery was made by Associate Professor Christian Wolf and his team from The Australian National University (ANU).
The finding has led them to revise the black hole’s estimated mass to be more than 10 times lower than previously thought.
Technological advancement
Black hole’s mass re-estimated
The team used advanced optical equipment at the European Southern Observatory in Chile to study J0529.
This technology helped them magnify the black hole’s light and observe the gas swirling around it.
Professor Wolf explained that despite the quasar’s extreme luminosity, its central black hole was found to be “only” about one billion solar masses.
Black hole ejecting gas it consumes
Professor Wolf further clarified that instead of spinning rapidly as previously assumed, this black hole is ejecting the gas it’s consuming.
The gas is being blown away by the extreme density of light, making it the brightest object in the universe known to date.
The black hole’s distance of over 12 billion light-years has made studying its inner structure difficult until now.
Discovery could explain supermassive black holes’ origin
The discovery of J0529 could explain the origin of supermassive black holes in the universe.
Wolf said, “While the rate at which they grow is still too fast to be explained easily, the re-weighing of this object and ones like it means that supermassive black holes may well originate from collapsing stars in the early stages of the universe.”