Hold onto your hats, space enthusiasts! Astronomers have just made an astonishing discovery – the most massive black hole ever found! This monstrous black hole, dubbed j2157, weighs in at a mind-boggling 34 billion times the mass of our sun. Yes, you read that right – 34 billion times!

The research, led by the National University of Australia, has shed light on the awe-inspiring power of this colossal cosmic beast. The team discovered this gargantuan black hole back in 2018, but they’ve only recently released their findings, revealing how it devours the equivalent of one sun every day! That’s a billion with a ‘b’!

Dr. Christopher Onkan and his colleagues describe the black hole’s size as eight thousand times the mass of Sagittarius A*, the black hole located at the center of our Milky Way. If our Milky Way’s black hole wanted to match j2157’s size, it would have to consume two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy. It’s hard to wrap your head around just how colossal this black hole is.

The team studied j2157 when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, less than ten percent of its current age. This makes j2157 the largest known black hole in terms of mass in the early universe. According to Dr. Fuyon Dian, one of the team’s astronomers, we don’t yet know how black holes can get so big so early in the universe’s life. But, the team is hoping to find more black holes to help solve this cosmic mystery.

The black hole’s massive size isn’t the only thing that makes it special. It’s located at the center of a quasar galaxy and radiates energy a thousand times greater than our entire Milky Way. The team used the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii and the 8-meter Very Large Telescope in Chile.

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