From: a.ashfield Jones, Big though it is, it is not large compared with the > 100 billion galaxies in the Universe.
No but it is by far the most massive structure that we presently are aware of. And the fact it has gone undetected until 2015 raises many issues about prior assumptions used in our models (and our capability to understand the cosmos). Not to mention, what other major surprises like this one await discovery? In our frame of reference, this object is spewing out the equivalent energy of 3000 Milky Way galaxies most of which have their own black holes, and 3000 galaxies (450 trillion suns) is a small fraction of all galaxies. Yet this overlooks its great age, which then begs the question: since the quasar is almost as old as the Universe, as we are seeing it now - how much more mass has it gained in the intervening 12 billion years, unbeknownst to us - and will it spew out increasing amounts of energy over time? It will be most interesting if 100 years from now, someone notices that its energy emission has increased substantially. Mind boggling.
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