Let’s face it, to those of us without a thorough understanding of them, black holes are scary.

For those who do have an in-depth knowledge of the phenomenon, they’re downright terrifying.

And that’s because the gravity in a black hole is so dense that nothing can escape, not even light (hence the name). And if you were unfortunate enough to fall into a black hole and fall beyond the event horizon the mammoth forces inside would subject you to a process called ‘spaghettification’.

It sounds gruesome and formidable, but in a theoretical sense, there’s something quite fascinating about these unusual astronomical structures.

And that’s why astronomers and space aficionados around the world have been thrilled by the discovery of yet another black hole by a team using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory.

With the first observations and calculations regarding the black hole, known as LID-568, recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy, there’s a lot for enthusiasts to get excited about.

But there is something unusual about this black hole which, owing to its size, falls into the ‘supermassive’ category.

Located at the center of another galaxy, not far in space and time from the Big Bang, is this new supermassive black hole. And what’s more, this one is hungry.

Our knowledge around the consumption rate of a black hole is known as its Eddington limit, which refers to how fast it can absorb matter as a result of a range of factors including luminosity, inward gravitational pull and outward pressure.

And after all their calculations, according to the astronomers, this greedy black hole has been observed consuming matter way faster than scientists thought likely, or even possible.

In fact, LID-568 is consuming matter around it at over 40 times its calculated Eddington limit, as astronomer Julia Scharwächter explained in a statement:

“This black hole is having a feast. This extreme case shows that a fast-feeding mechanism above the Eddington limit is one of the possible explanations for why we see these very heavy black holes so early in the Universe.”

Whilst formidable this new information learned about LID-568 is helping astronomers to understand why supermassive black holes appear to grow so quickly. This huge example in particular occurs just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang – which is nothing in space terms.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.