Scientists have identified a potential candidate for the most luminous entity in existence – a quasar containing a rapidly expanding black hole that devours the mass of an entire sun every day.

The quasar, which has broken records, emits light that is 500 trillion times stronger than our sun. According to a team led by Australian researchers, the black hole that fuels this faraway quasar is over 17 billion times larger than our sun. This finding was published on Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Scientists imagine the quasar to be a violent location, despite appearing as a small dot in images.

The rotating disk around the quasar’s black hole — the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars — is like a cosmic hurricane.

The primary author of the study, Christian Wolf from Australian National University, stated in an email that this quasar is the most chaotic location known to us in the entire universe.

In 1980, while conducting a sky survey, the European Southern Observatory discovered an object named J0529-4351. At the time, it was believed to be a star. However, it was only identified as a quasar – the highly energetic and bright center of a galaxy – last year. Further confirmation was obtained through observations from telescopes in Australia and Chile’s Atacama Desert.

According to Yale University’s Priyamvada Natarajan, who was not involved in the study, the interesting aspect of this quasar is that it was easily visible but mistakenly labeled as a star before.

Newer research and simulations have revealed that the quasar is consuming about 370 times the mass of our sun every year, which is equivalent to one sun per day. The team’s analysis indicates that the black hole’s mass is estimated to be 17 to 19 billion times that of our sun. Further observations are necessary in order to fully comprehend its rate of growth.

The quasar has existed since the early stages of the universe and is located 12 billion light-years away. In terms of distance, a light-year is equivalent to 5.8 trillion miles.