A new study that was published on the journal Nature featured a fast-consuming small black hole that is constantly devouring a nearby star 10 times faster than previously thought.

P13, the fast consuming black hole, lies on the galaxy NGC7793 about 12 million light years from Earth.

Researchers said the black hole is currently ingesting a weight equivalent to 100 billion hot dogs every minute.

Like Us on Facebook

Roberto Soria from the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research said that gas falling towards the black hole tend to be very hot and bright.

Previous researchers thought that the black hole's bigger than ordinary size causes the luminous light coming from it.

Soria explained that the determinant of the speed at which black hole could swallow gas and produce light was its size.

It was easy to assume that P13 was bigger than ordinary black holes that can be seen in Milky Way, he added.

However, when they measured the mas of P13 they found out that that it was a small black hole, despite being a million times brighter than the Sun.

It only made sense when they found out the amount of material it was consuming was causing its brightness.

Soria explained that P13 consumes a supergiant star that is 20 times heavier than the Sun.

He also explained that the star that the black hole consumes has a side that is always brighter because of the X-ray illumination from P13.

Through this, they were able to measure the time it takes for the black hole and the star it's consuming to rotate around each other, which is 64 days.

They then realized that the black hole probably is less than 15 times the mass of the sun but it still remains to be one of the champions of competitive gas eating in the universe.

It is capable of swallowing its neighbor star in less than a million years, which is very short on cosmic scales.