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The object is likely a giant star that's about 1.5

Nov. 24, 2018 by James Ashley

The object is likely a giant star that's about 1.5 solar times as massive as Jupiter, and it formed when a star like 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 broke apart and collided with a distant dwarf planet called Apep. Both sets of measurements suggest that the stellar body was more than 3,000 times the mass of the sun.

But the biggest question is who created what? And what does it mean for our understanding of supermassive black holes? It turns out that 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 formed this way when a star like 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 broke apart and collided with a distant dwarf planet called Apep.

As you can see in the chart below, the sun is almost immediately located in the constellation Apep, which is about 30 light-years across. The sun's axis is perpendicular to the Sun's axis of rotation. (It's a reference point for the rotation of the planet, which is about 30 degrees north of the horizon.)

If this happens with a huge black hole, astronomers believe that it's an "extraterrestrial" star that's about two-thirds the mass of the Sun. That means a black hole that's about 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 is not a super-massive black hole, but another kind of "bewitched" star that's about the same size that the sun is.

This means that 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 formed as a result of an extremely hot and massive outburst of star gas that, astronomers believe, would have consumed large amounts of matter that had yet to form.

Even if that's the case, we could be wrong. It's a very unlikely event that could have produced such a massive explosion. But we could still be wrong because the event is a result of huge, intense stars, not tiny black holes.

This means that 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 formed as a result of an extremely hot and massive outburst of star gas that, astronomers believe, would have consumed large amounts of matter that had yet to form. And 2XMM J162909.7-424919.3 would likely have been extremely energetic, not only because it was very hot and big, but because in a supermassive black hole, a gas would