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www.dailymail.co.uk_sciencetech 2015 01852.txt.txt

#Nasa spots most luminous galaxy in the universe-shining with the light of more than 300 TRILLION suns A dazzling galaxy that shines with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered by astronomers. The galaxy is the most luminous found to date and belongs to a new class of mysterious objects known as'extremely luminous infrared galaxies',or Elrigs. Named Wise J224607. 57-052635.0, scientists believe the galaxy may have a behemoth black hole at its heart but how this black hole came to be so big remains a mystery.''We are looking at a very intense phase of galaxy evolution, 'said Chao-Wei Tsai of Nasa's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California, 'This dazzling light may be from the main growth spurt of the galaxy's black hole.''Supermassive black holes draw gas and matter into a disk around them, heating the disk to roaring temperatures of millions of degrees and blasting out high-energy, visible, ultraviolet, and X-ray light. The light is blocked by surrounding cocoons of dust. As the dust heats up, it radiates infrared light. Immense black holes are common at the cores of galaxies, but finding one this big so'far back'in the cosmos is rare. Because light from the galaxy hosting the black hole has travelled 12.5 billion years to reach us, astronomers are seeing the object as it was in the distant past. The black hole was already billions of times the mass of our sun when our universe was only a tenth of its present age of 13.8 billion years. The discovery was made by Nasa as it was combing through data from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise), an infrared space telescope launched in 2009. The new study suggests black holes in the Elrigs could have grown so massive because embryonic black holes, might be thought bigger than possible. The other two explanations involve either breaking or bending the theoretical limit of black hole feeding, called the Eddington limit. When a black hole feeds, gas falls in and heats up, blasting out light. The pressure of the light actually pushes the gas away creating a limit to how fast the black hole can continuously scarf down matter. If a black hole broke this limit, it could theoretically balloon in size at a breakneck pace. Black holes have previously been observed breaking this limit; however, the black hole in the study would have had to repeatedly break the limit to grow this large. Alternatively, the black holes might just be bending this limit. If a black hole spins slowly enough, it won't repel its meal as much. In the end, a slow-spinning black hole can eat up more matter than a fast spinner.''The massive black holes in Elrigs could be gorging themselves on more matter for a longer period of time, 'said Andrew Blain of University of Leicester.''It's like winning a hot-dog-eating contest lasting hundreds of millions of years.''More research is needed to solve this puzzle of these dazzlingly luminous galaxies. The team has plans to better determine the masses of the central black holes. Knowing these objects'true hefts will help reveal their history, as well as that of other galaxies, in this very crucial and frenzied chapter of our cosmos m

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