Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen (AT2021lwx)
Source: BBC
Astronomers detect largest cosmic explosion ever seen
12 May 2023
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
Astronomers have discovered what they believe to be the largest explosion ever detected.
The explosion is more than 10 times brighter than any recorded exploding star - known as a supernova.
So far it has lasted more than three years, much longer than most supernovae which are usually only visibly bright for a few months.
One theory is that the blast was caused when a vast cloud of gas was swallowed up by a black hole.
A flash in the sky was first automatically detected and recorded in 2020 by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California. But it wasn't until a year later that it was picked up by astronomers combing through the data.
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Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65571309
The actual explosion captured by a Nasa space telescope (NASA)
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Fireball ‘100 times the size of the solar system’ thought to have been caused by gas being sucked into supermassive black hole
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
@hannahdev
Thu 11 May 2023 19.01 EDT
It started as an unremarkable flicker in the night sky. But closer observations revealed that astronomers had captured the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, an event thought to have been triggered by a giant cloud of gas being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole.
The flare-up, traced to 8bn light years away, is more than 10 times brighter than any known supernova and has so far lasted more than three years, making it the most energetic explosion on record.
“It went unnoticed for a year as it gradually got brighter,” said Dr Philip Wiseman, an astronomer at Southampton University who led the observations. It was only when follow-up observations revealed how distant it was that astronomers appreciated the event’s almost unimaginable scale.
“We’ve estimated it’s a fireball 100 times the size of the solar system with a brightness about 2tn times the sun’s,” Wiseman said. “In three years, this event has released about 100 times as much energy as the sun will in its 10bn-year lifetime.”
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/12/astronomers-capture-largest-cosmic-explosion-ever-witnessed