Youngest Black Hole in the Universe Discovered

According to a recently released report by National Geographic, astronomers have discovered a mammoth black hole that is said to be 4.2 trillion times as bright as the Sun. Located at a distance of more than 12 billion light years from the Sun, the scientists are claiming the quasar to be the youngest known black hole in the Universe. Researchers believe that the quasar came into existence 900 million years after the Big Bang and is expected to weigh as much as 12 billion suns.

Interestingly, the quasar which has been dubbed the SDSS J0100+2802, is not the biggest black hole to be discovered. But experts are amazed at its size considering its relatively young age. To put it in better context, none of the quasars around the same age have grown more than 3 billion times the size of the sun. This is because black holes in general, grow very slowly taking millions of years while sucking up stars and gases in the process. Scientists have so far uncovered only 40 quasars in the Universe.

Astronomers from observatories in Chile, China, Arizona and Hawaii were able to spot the quasar, which was shown to be emanating a tremendous amount of luminosity. The study first published in the Nature magazine on Wednesday, has managed to generate a lot of interest in the scientific community.

Xiaouhui Fan, co-author of the study and an astronomer from the Steward Observatory said, 'We were surprised' when he spoke about the discovery.

Fan added, "We're not used to looking at objects that bright because when we think about these quasars as distant objects, they're supposed to be very faint."

"The fact that the supermassive black hole has grown to 12 billion solar masses in less than a billion years implies that the radiation did not inhibit the high accretion. The quasar can therefore be used as a means of learning about the distant cosmos. ... The brighter the quasar, the more comprehensive the investigation of the intervening gas can be," co-author Venemans wrote.