Astronomers have discovered a black hole that is consuming
gas from a nearby star 10 times faster than previously thought possible. The
black hole—known as P13—lies on the outskirts of the galaxy NGC7793 about 12
million light years from Earth and is ingesting a weight equivalent to 100
billion billion hot dogs every minute.
The discovery was published today in the journal Nature.
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research astronomer
Dr Roberto Soria, who is based at ICRAR’s Curtin University node, said that as
gas falls towards a black hole it gets very hot and bright. He said scientists
first noticed P13 because it was a lot more luminous than other black holes,
but it was initially assumed that it was simply bigger.