A super massive black hole 12 million times larger than
the sun and powering the brightest lighthouse in the distant universe has been
discovered.
The extraordinary object is at the centre of a quasar, an
intensely powerful galactic radiation source with a million billion times the
sun’s energy output. The nature of quasars has remained a mystery since they
were discovered in 1963.
Mainly the object, discovered by astronomers in 2013, is six times greater than its largest-known contemporaries.
Its existence poses a challenge for theories of the
evolution of black holes, stars and galaxies, the scientific journal Nature
reported.
Light from the black hole took 12.9 billion years to
reach the Earth, so astronomers see the object as it was 900 million years
after the Big Bang. Read more……