Astronomers find 14 black holes feasting on surrounding space matter

We know that black holes in space devour material around them. Even light can't escape from them. We also know that black holes are also found at the centre of galaxies just like Milky Way Galaxy has.

But new images from a corner of space have thrown up 14 black holes hungrily eating material in the space around them.

These 14 black holes (and the galaxies associated with them) are located in what is called Spiderweb protocluster.

The hungry feast of the black holes means that these black holes are growing.

The Spiderweb protocluster is named after Spiderweb galaxy that is at the center of the protocluster. The protocluster was observed over 8 days using Chandra X-Ray observatory. The hungry black holes were discovered thus.

The Spiderweb protocluster is a growing cluster of galaxies. It is 10.6 billion light-years away from us. This means that what we are seeing today happened 10.6 billion light years ago. So this protocluster was behaving like it was observed now 10.6 billion years ago.

This period is known as 'Cosmic Noon' during which star-formation was taking place at a furious rate.

It is held that Spiderweb protocluster will by today have evolved into a stable, massive cluster of galaxies that are gravitationally bound.

Study of Spiderweb protocluster and it development may give scientists opportunity to gain insight into how massive structures are formed in space.