The power source of this ‘glowing monster’ is large amounts of matter, such as gas, dust, and other stellar debris.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As it is rabidly consumed, the matter gives off intense radiation, which is detectable by telescopes such as\u00a0Chandra.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘It was a bit shocking to see this black hole growing by leaps and bounds,’ said\u00a0Luca Ighina, study author at the Harvard\u2013Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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An artist\u2019s concept of a supermassive black hole, a surrounding disk of material falling towards the black hole and a jet containing particles moving away at close to the speed of light. New Chandra observations indicate that the black hole is growing at a rate that exceeds the usual limit for black holes, called the Eddington Limit<\/p>\n
Black holes grow by gobbling up surrounding matter \u2013 a process scientists call accretion \u2013 as well as by merging with other black holes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They have an incredibly bright ‘accretion disk’ \u2013 a hot disk of gas orbiting the black hole and its main source of light.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0accretion disk is created by material emitting energy as it falls into the black hole, whether it’s gas, dust or matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At about a billion times the mass of our sun, this black hole, RACS J0320\u201335, is officially in the upper range of the ‘supermassive’ classification for black holes \u2013 and it’s still growing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Researchers theorize it is getting yet more massive at a rate of somewhere between 300 and 3,000 solar masses annually.<\/p>\n
That means it’s gobbling up the equivalent of\u00a0300 to 3,000 of our suns per year!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most large galaxies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, Sagittarius A* is the black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy<\/a>, but its mass is only about 4.3 million times the mass of our sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n Black hole\u00a0RACS J0320\u201335, captured through X\u2013ray emissions detected by Chandra,\u00a0weighs about a billion times the mass of our sun<\/p>\n Annotated black hole: Right at the centre is the event horizon \u2013 the point at which\u00a0nothing, not even light, can escape. Note the accretion disk’ \u2013 a hot disk of gas orbiting the black hole and its main source of light<\/p>\n What is the Eddington limit?\u00a0 <\/p>\n The Eddington Limit refers to the\u00a0theoretical upper limit to the rate at which a black hole can absorb matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n When matter is pulled toward a black hole, it is heated and produces intense radiation over a broad spectrum, including X\u2013rays and optical light.\u00a0 This radiation creates pressure on the infalling material.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the rate of infalling matter reaches a critical value, the radiation pressure balances the black hole\u2019s gravity, and matter cannot normally fall inwards any more rapidly.\u00a0<\/p>\n That maximum is referred to as the Eddington limit.\u00a0<\/p>\n <!- – ad: https:\/\/mads.dailymail.co.uk\/v8\/us\/sciencetech\/none\/article\/other\/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – -><\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n But what sets\u00a0RACS J0320\u201335 apart is its high mass and unusually high growth rate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n RACS J0320\u201335 was discovered two years ago using NASA’s\u00a0<\/a>Chandra X\u2013ray Observatory,\u00a0the world’s most powerful X\u2013ray telescope.<\/p>\n In orbit around Earth for more than 25 years now,\u00a0Chandra is specially designed to detect X\u2013ray emission from very hot regions of the universe.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, using data from the NASA telescope, researchers have been able to pinpoint the black hole’s incredible growth rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is growing at 2.4 times the Eddington limit \u2013 the theoretical maximum ‘speed limit’ that defines how fast a black hole can consume matter.<\/p>\n The Eddington limit is the point where the outward force of radiation overcomes the inward pull of gravity \u2013 the same gravity that’s hoovering up surrounding matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the accepted theory, above this limit, all material falling into the black hole would be blown away because of the radiation pressure, shutting off the accretion that is feeding the black hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n So the fact it is still growing \u2013 at 2.4 times the Eddington limit \u2013 is leaving scientists perplexed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Artist rendering of the Chandra X\u2013ray Observatory space telescope, the world’s most powerful X\u2013ray telescope, according to NASA<\/p>\n Scientists lifted the veil on the first images ever captured of a black hole in April 2019. The glowing orange ring shows the event horizon of M87, in the Virgo galaxy cluster<\/p>\n Remarkably, RACS J0320\u201335 is producing more X\u2013rays than any other black hole seen in the first billion years of the universe, they say in their paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fact this black hole is located about 12.8 billion light\u2013years from Earth means that its light has taken\u00a012.8 billion years to get to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n Because the universe is 13.8 billion years old,\u00a0astronomers are seeing this black hole only 920 million years after the universe began.\u00a0<\/p>\n Black holes are so far away that getting an image of one was only managed in 2019<\/a>, using a massive network of Earth telescopes.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/102341445-15121429-image-m-24_1758533438063.jpg\")
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