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Astronomers Discover Universe's Brightest Object (theguardian.com) 43

Posted by msmash from the far-far-away dept.
The brightest known object in the universe, a quasar 500tn times brighter than our sun, was "hiding in plain sight," researchers say. From a report: Australian scientists spotted a quasar powered by the fastest growing black hole ever discovered. Its mass is about 17bn times that of our solar system's sun, and it devours the equivalent of a sun a day. The light from the celestial object travelled for more than 12bn years to reach Earth. Australian National University scientists first spotted it using a 2.3-metre telescope at the university's NSW Siding Spring Observatory in Coonabarabran. They then confirmed the find using the European Southern Observatory's (ESO's) Very Large Telescope, which has a primary mirror of 8 metres. The findings by the ANU researchers, in collaboration with the ESO, the University of Melbourne, and France's Sorbonne Universite have been published in Nature Astronomy.
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Astronomers Discover Universe's Brightest Object More

Astronomers Discover Universe's Brightest Object

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  • Correction (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @11:09AM (#64254508)

    They discovered the brightest object 12 billion years ago.

    • No, they discovered it now.
      If I dig in my garden and I find a 600 year old coin, it means I found it now, not 600 years ago.

      • Both!

        They discovered now the brightest object 12 billion years ago.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by haruchai ( 17472 )

        No, they discovered it now.
        If I dig in my garden and I find a 600 year old coin, it means I found it now, not 600 years ago.

        Not the same thing. You're looking at a 12 billion year old live stream.
        Even the state of our own local star isn't ever "now" - what we see is 8 minutes behind "now"

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Your (common) mistake is believing that the universe marches to a single drumbeat, that there is a clock that ticks the same for everyone. Einstein taught us that this is not true.
      • The brightest object is actually some of the LED torches sold on Aliexpress, at least according to the specs listed there. It's a good thing no-one has ever lit one of those up, because it could ignite portions of the atmosphere.

    • Re:Correction (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @11:23AM (#64254544)
      Relativity has weird consequences. One of them is that it's meaningless to say light-speed information was in the past. There is no way to define anything other than the light received. So it's right now, even though it wasn't. o_O

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Starts almost as many vocabulary debates as "AI".

      • It's not meaningless at all. Most of the distant stars we see how are long gone and the fact that we can still see them now doesnt change that.

        • Re: Correction (Score:4, Interesting)

          by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @03:55PM (#64255436)
          What's meaningless at this scale is the concept of "now." We can't talk about what those stars are like now because it's an ill-defined term at these distances. Technically it's I'll-defined at all distances, but on a planetary scale the approximation is good enough.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            It's not ill defined, it's relative. You can change the hyperplane in spacetime that you consider "now" simply by going for a walk. Since moving rotates that hyperplane, you have to move quite fast to make an appreciable difference in things that are close (in spacetime) but any movement at all makes a big difference for things that are distant in spacetime.

        • The point is there's no empirical frame of reference outside of the arrival of light, so it's meaningless to say it was in the past. It might be conceptually helpful to say so, but it doesn't actually refer to anything.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            Absolute rubbish. Time ticks away regardless of light. Perhaps you think because we can't see the big bang it never happened?

            • The laws of physics don't work by common sense. There is no time outside of light propagation. Or, to put it more fairly, there has not yet been evidence of a version of time that works that way. And btw, the Big Bang is not actually a theorized event, it's just a placeholder for when conditions become too exotic to model with current theory.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Viol8 ( 599362 )

                " There is no time outside of light propagation"

                Sorry, thats rubbish. Events happen regardless of light and quantum entanglement proves it.

                • Once again, you seem to be having trouble with reading comprehension: Common sense is not evidence in fundamental physics. If it were, neither relativity nor quantum mechanics would ever even have been considered.
                • Entanglement is not what you think it is. Whatever popular science has claimed about it, you can't read it faster than light, and you definitely can't valid the result faster than light. There are no free lunches.

    • Re: Correction (Score:5, Informative)

      by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @12:17PM (#64254728)
      No, it's the brightest object in the observable universe right now. "Observable universe" just means the universe as we see it from (or near) Earth, right now, and it's what is usually meant when people talk about "the universe" (at least in astronomy). Of course the universe as a whole is (probably) not just the observable universe, but we can't really say much about the unobservable parts (since they're unobserved we can't even be sure they exist), so it's usually not helpful or relevant to talk about them.
    • No, it are be will have has been the brightest object.. (According to the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the hardest thing about time travel is the grammar.)
  • They haven't found the brighter ones yet.
    • The article says the lead author "doubts its record would ever be beaten," but it doesn't say the argument that supports that conclusion.

      For example, if it is so distant that it's near the far end of the observable universe, yet so bright that it can be seen with a telescope whose field of view is wide enough to cover the entire sphere around us in a reasonable amount of time and this has been done without finding something brighter, then it seems you could pretty well rule out anything brighter existing

  • TFA: and that he doubted its record would ever be beaten.

    Famous last words. We haven't cataloged nearly enough of the sky to claim that.

  • Long before our Sun and Solar System formed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @12:01PM (#64254686)

    It seems unimaginable that what we're seeing now occurred long before we were formed out of dust.

  • TFA: Australian rah-rah (Score:3)

    by 0xG ( 712423 ) on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @12:02PM (#64254690)

    The article is more about how the Australian telescopes were used than the actual cosmology involved, but...17 Gigasols, shit that sucker is large.

    I wonder if the end of the universe will happen when the last two of these things collide, resulting in...another big bang?

  • I thought the brightest object in the universe was Elon Musk!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by haruchai ( 17472 )

      I thought the brightest object in the universe was Elon Musk!

      only because there's a quasar's light shining through the hole in the back of his head

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      I thought the brightest object in the universe was Elon Musk!

      Only in his own universe. Not this one.

  • A Beowulf cluster of these things!
  • it isn't in D.C.

  • They might have found it sooner!

    Seems ironic.

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