Quasar beams with might,
by Martina Matijević
The angry black hole awakens—
Who switched on the stars?
Astronomers have identified the brightest and fastest-growing quasar ever observed, which is powered by a supermassive black hole. This black hole is rapidly growing at a rate of one solar mass per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole known. The quasar, located 12 billion light-years away, is over 500 trillion times more luminous than the Sun.
Further reading:
‘Brightest and fastest-growing: Astronomers identify record-breaking quasar’, 2024, ESO, ScienceDaily, available: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240222122324.htm
‘The accretion of a solar mass per day by a 17-billion solar mass black hole’, 2024, Wolf, C. et al., Nature Astronomy, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02195-x
Author bio:
Matijević has orbited the Sun 23 times, making her 23 years old in Earth’s timekeeping system. A science enthusiast and poet, her work has appeared in 5-7-5 Haiku Journal, View from Atlantis and Awen. You can discover more of her poetry here: https://tinamatijev.wixsite.com/martina-matijevi
Read another sciku by Matijević here: ‘Supersonic Winds’ and ‘The vast universe’.