Supermassive black hole, artwork. Photo: VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS (Getty)
Here’s a good reason to visit your shrink for a second time this week.
According to Maxim, astronomers in Australia have discovered what they believe to be the fastest-growing supermassive black hole ever. It’s supposedly so gigantic it could eat up our sun in just two days.
“This black hole is growing so rapidly that it’s shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat,” Dr. Wolf from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics said. “If we had this monster sitting at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, it would appear 10 times brighter than a full moon. It would appear as an incredibly bright pin-point star that would almost wash out all of the stars in the sky.”
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Of course the “comforting” factor is that this supermassive black hole is millions of light years away, and even if it really was near our planet, there would be absolutely nothing you, me or even our mommies could do about it. The best case scenario would be that it disturbs Earth’s orbit to the point that the planet moves out of the “Goldilocks” zone for part of a year, which would lead to oceans boiling or the planet freezing. However, due to its size and stature, it would probably just rip the planet apart if it got close enough.
So, yeah, happy Monday!