A cosmic glutton is breaking the laws of physics to grow
In short: Most black holes have a speed limit on how fast they can feed. Yet, astronomers have found a monster that seems to be breaking that rule, consuming matter so rapidly it defies our current understanding of how the universe's largest objects are born.
The black hole known as RACS J0320-35 is a record-breaking anomaly. Located approximately 12.8 billion light-years away, it is being observed as it existed only 920 million years after the Big Bang. Despite its young age, it already weighs about one billion times the mass of our Sun. It powers a quasar—an object so luminous it outshines entire galaxies—by funneling massive amounts of matter into its center.
Under normal conditions, black holes are governed by the Eddington limit. This is a physical threshold where the outward pressure of radiation produced by infalling matter balances the inward pull of gravity. If a black hole tries to eat too fast, the resulting radiation pressure pushes the new material away, effectively capping its growth. However, X-ray data from NASA's Chandra Observatory in 2023 revealed that RACS J0320-35 is growing at roughly 2.4 times this limit, appearing to grow by "leaps and bounds."
This discovery creates a cosmological puzzle. To reach a billion solar masses so quickly, scientists previously thought these objects had to be born as "seeds" of at least 10,000 Suns from the collapse of massive gas clouds. However, if RACS J0320-35 is indeed exceeding the Eddington limit, it might have started as a much smaller, more conventional seed—less than 100 Suns—born from a single collapsing star. Understanding this mechanism is key to explaining how supermassive black holes became so large so quickly in the early universe.
In contrast to this fast-growing monster, another discovery in June 2022 highlighted J1144, a supermassive black hole with a mass of over three billion suns. J1144 is known for its extreme appetite, absorbing the equivalent mass of the Earth every single second. Its event horizon is so wide that the entire orbits of all planets in our solar system could fit inside it.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: NASA Discovers A Black Hole That's Growing At An Alarming Rate
- Also: NASA's Chandra Finds Black Hole With Tremendous Growth - NASA
- Also: Chandra finds black hole that's growing at 2.4 times the Eddington limit
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