Biggest ever space explosion! Astronomers shocked, have no idea where it came from
According to researchers at the University of Southampton, a massive space explosion was discovered that was ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.
The explosion is going on for the past three years and actually took place nearly 8 billion light years away when the universe was around 6 billion years old. The explosion is known as AT2021lwx and is considered the biggest explosion in history!
According to researchers, “A supermassive black hole has forcefully disrupted a gigantic cloud of gas that may be thousands of times bigger than our sun, leading to the explosion.”
They also believe that a supernova can last for a few months but something that this bright for more than two years is unusual.
“We came upon this by chance, as it was flagged by our search algorithm when we were searching for a type of supernova,” says Dr. Philip Wiseman, Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, who led the research. “
The study was done with the help of various high-tech telescopes, Neil Gehrels Swift Telescope (a collaboration between NASA, the UK, and Italy) and the Gran Telescopio Canarias in La Palma, Spain.
The discovery and research led to no conclusion as astronomers have no evidence whatsoever that caused such a massive explosion, they are clueless and looking for more answers to gain some deep insights.
The team at the University of Southampton is collecting more evidence by measuring different wavelengths, including X-rays that could reveal the object's surface and temperature, and what underlying processes are taking place.
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