The Brightest Object in the Universe: A Glowing Quasar 12 Billion Light-Years Away
Astronomers have discovered the brightest known object in the universe, a quasar located 12 billion light-years away. This quasar, officially named J059-4351, is a glowing core of a galaxy that shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than our sun.
What is a Quasar?
Quasars are the brightest objects in the cosmos. They are powered by supermassive black holes that are actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. The friction created by the matter swirling around the black hole releases glowing heat that can be seen from far away.
The Record-Breaking Quasar
The quasar J059-4351 is the most luminous object ever observed. It is powered by a black hole that is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen.
The accretion disc around the black hole is 15,000 times the length between the sun and Neptune. The disc glows brightly as it releases unfathomable amounts of energy.
How Astronomers Found the Quasar
Researchers unknowingly spotted the ultra-bright quasar in images taken in 1980 by the Schmidt Southern Sky Survey, a telescope in Australia. However, they initially misidentified it as a star.
Typically, astronomers find quasars using machine-learning models trained to survey large areas of the sky for objects that look like known quasars in existing data. This makes it harder to spot unusually bright quasars that are unlike anything seen before.
Last year, the study authors determined that the object was in fact a quasar using a telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. They followed up with data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile to determine that the quasar was the brightest ever seen.
The Black Hole at the Center of the Quasar
The black hole at the center of the quasar J059-4351 weighs about the same as 17 billion suns. It is ravenous, consuming an amount of material equivalent to as much as 413 suns each year.
As the black hole consumes matter, it releases enormous amounts of energy. This energy heats the accretion disc to temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius and creates powerful winds that would go around Earth in a second.
The Future of the Quasar
The light from the quasar J059-4351 took about 12 billion years to reach us. This means that we are seeing the quasar as it existed 12 billion years ago.
At that time, the universe was much younger and more chaotic than it is today. There was more gas and dust floating freely around, which provided the black hole with a plentiful supply of food.
However, over time, much of the gas and dust in the universe has consolidated into stars and galaxies. This means that black holes no longer have as much material to feed on as they did in the early universe.
As a result, the black hole at the center of the quasar J059-4351 will eventually stop growing. Wolf believes that nothing will ever top this record for the universe’s brightest object.
