The brightest galaxy in the known universe is literally tearing itself apart.
The galaxy named W2246-0526 is located about 12.4 billion light-years from Earth, and its extremely huge black hole seems to be eating up much of the galaxy's material, NASA announced Friday.
W2246-0526 appears to be shooting out an extreme amount of gas.
"This galaxy is tearing itself apart," astronomer Roberto Assef, who was involved in the study, said in statement. "The momentum and energy of the particles of light deposited in the gas are so great that they are pushing the gas out in all directions."
Scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile took the measurements that allowed researchers to see that gas spread throughout the galaxy was very turbulent.
The extreme gravity of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy pulls in gas and other material into a disk -- called an accretion disk -- around the black hole, NASA said. That black hole is most likely the cause of the turbulence.
"The friction from this disk produces the intense brightness, making the galaxy shine like a combination of more than 300 trillion suns," the agency added.
Researchers have found turbulent gas around some supermassive black holes in other galaxies before, but this marks the first time turbulent gas has been found across a whole galaxy.
It's possible that eventually the gas could either push all the way out of the galaxy, or collapse back into the galaxy, scientists said.
"A likely finale would be that the galaxy will blow out all of the gas and dust that is surrounding it, and we would see the accretion disk without its dust cover -- what we call a quasar," Assef added.
NASA's WISE satellite discovered the galaxy in 2015, and the new accretion disk research is detailed in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.