Fastest-growing black hole of past 9bn years may have been found, Australian-led astronomers say

Astronomers believe they have discovered the fastest-growing black hole of the past 9bn years.

The supermassive black hole consumes the equivalent of one Earth every second and has the mass of 3bn suns, they estimate.

J1144 was the most luminous quasar in the last 9bn years of cosmic history, the scientists found.

Almost every galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its centre, Panther said.

J1144 was first spotted by Adrian Lucy, a doctoral student, while searching for close pairs of binary stars in the Milky Way.

The research is not yet peer-reviewed; it has been published as a preprint and submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.