Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Space

Astronomers Report Brightest-Ever, Three-Year Cosmic Explosion (cnn.com) 13

"Astronomers have spotted the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, and it's 10 times brighter than any known exploding star, or supernova," reports CNN: The brightness of the explosion, called AT2021lwx, has lasted for three years, while most supernovas are only bright for a few months. The event, still being detected by telescopes, occurred nearly 8 billion light-years away from Earth when the universe was about 6 billion years old. The luminosity of the explosion is also three times brighter than tidal disruption events, when stars fall into supermassive black holes.

But what triggered such a long-lived, massive cosmic explosion? Astronomers said they think a supermassive black hole disrupted a vast gas or dust cloud, potentially thousands of times larger than our sun. It's possible that the cloud was drawn off the course of its orbit and went flying into the black hole, the researchers said. As the black hole swallowed pieces of the hydrogen cloud, shock waves likely reverberated through the cloud's remnants and into the swirling mass of material that orbits around the black hole...

The research team determined that the incredibly luminous event was nearly 100 times brighter than all the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy combined.

The New York Times calls its "one of the most violent and energetic acts of cosmic cannibalism ever witnessed, perhaps the biggest explosion seen yet in the history of the universe... [A] black hole perhaps a billion times as massive as the sun seems to be gorging on a humongous cloud of gas." "Most supernovae and tidal disruption events only last for a couple of months before fading away," said Philip Wiseman, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton and the lead author of the new paper [published Thursday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society]. "For something to be bright for two-plus years was immediately very unusual...."

He added that, with a total radiated energy equal to 100 supernovas, "it is one of the most luminous transients ever discovered." Jolt for jolt, that would put it in the company of colliding black holes. "Black holes colliding release energy in gravitational waves at an extreme luminosity — 10 billion times more 'powerful' than this explosion," Dr. Wiseman wrote. "But that power only lasts for 20 milliseconds," adding that this explosion has lasted years.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Astronomers Report Brightest-Ever, Three-Year Cosmic Explosion

Comments Filter:

Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know that?

Working...