Largest Quasar/BlackHole ever found - 12billion years old - 12 billion times Sun mass

This is pretty cool:



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↔ It shines 429 trillion times brighter than The Sun.

↔ It is 12 billion times the mass of The Sun.(Which is 3 times the size of the supper massive black hole that our galaxy, The Milky Way, revolves around.)

↔ It is from 12 billion years ago when The Universe was very young. (They believe that back then accretion discs could be much more lively because The Universe was more dense.*)

↔ It is the 40th "large" quasar found so far. ("Large" meaning a redshift greater than z=6.)

Quote:

Astronomers have discovered the largest and most luminous black hole ever seen — an ancient monster with a mass about 12 billion times that of the sun — that dates back to when the universe was less than 1 billion years old. It remains a mystery how black holes could have grown so huge in such a relatively brief time after the dawn of the universe, researchers say. Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk in the hearts of most, if not all, large galaxies. The largest black holes found so far in the nearby universe have masses more than 10 billion times that of the sun. In comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is thought to have a mass only 4 million to 5 million times that of the sun.

Why some super massive black holes are bright & produce quasars:

Quote:

Although not even light can escape the powerful gravitational pulls of black holes — hence, their name — black holes are often bright. That's because they're surrounded by features known as accretion disks, which are made up of gas and dust that heat up and give off light as it swirl into the black holes. Astronomers suspect that quasars, the brightest objects in the universe, contain supermassive black holes that release extraordinarily large amounts of light as they rip apart stars.

*

Quote:

For instance, a recent study suggested that because the early universe was much smaller than it is today, gas was often denser, obscuring a substantial amount of the radiation given off by accretion disks and thus helping matter fall into black holes.

Main source:



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via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1APKDfv