Astronomy Picture of the Day: Fastest-growing black hole ever seen is devouring the equivalent of 1 Earth per second

 

The fastest-growing black hole ever seen is swallowing the mass equivalent of an entire Earth every second. 

This gargantuan black hole has a mass 3 billion times that of the sun, and its rapid consumption is causing the behemoth to grow rapidly, an international research team found. The black hole gorges via a process called accretion, in which it siphons matter from a thin disk of gas and dust rotating around the massive object.

Other black holes of a similar size stopped growing billions of years ago, but this newly discovered black hole is still getting larger. It's now 500 times bigger than Sagittarius A*,   the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way,  and would fit the whole solar system behind its event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can escape. 

Read more: https://www.space.com/fastest-growing-black-hole-powering-quasar?utm_campaign=socialflow