2023-05-13 06:09:29
The outburst is more than 10 times brighter than any other exploding star on record.
So far it has lasted for more than three years, much longer than most supernovae, which are normally only visibly bright for a few months.
One theory is that the explosion occurred when a black hole swallowed a huge cloud of gas.
a flash in the sky was automatically detected and registered for the first time in 2020 by the Zwicky Transitional Facility in California, USA.
But it wasn’t until a year later that astronomers detected it by reviewing the data.
they called the AT2021lwx event.
At that moment They thought it was nothing special because there was no indication of how far away it was, and therefore its brightness could not be calculated.
Last year, a team led by Philip Wiseman from the University of Southampton analyzed the light from the event.
This allowed them to calculate their distance: it happened at 8 billion light years away.
Wiseman described the moment he discovered the brilliance of the phenomenon: “We thought ‘Oh my God, this is amazing!'”
What caused it?
The team was completely baffled as to what could have caused something so brilliant.
There was nothing in the scientific literature that could explain something so brilliant and last so long time, Wiseman said.
“Most supernovae and tidal disruption events only last a couple of months before fading away. For something to be shiny for more than two years is really quite unusual.”
His theory is that the explosion is the result of a huge cloud of gaspossibly thousands of times larger than our Sun, swallowed by a supermassive black hole.
This would send shock waves through space and would leave superheated remnants of the cloud surrounding the black hole like a giant doughnut.
It is believed that all galaxies have giant black holes in his heart.
Wiseman believes that powerful explosions of this type could play a role in what he describes as “sculpt” the center of galaxies.
“It could be that these events, while extremely rare, are so energetic that they are key processes in how the centers of galaxies change over time.”
Robert Massey, deputy chief executive of the Royal Astronomical Society, explained that more huge explosions like this are now being sought.
“We have never seen anything like this before and certainly not on this scale“, he told BBC News.
“I would be surprised if this event was unique in the universe.”
Wiseman hopes to detect more events like this with the new telescope systems that will come into operation in the next years.
The team now sets out to collect more data about the explosion, by observing the object at different wavelengths, including X-rays, which could reveal the temperature of the object and what processes might be taking place on the surface.
They will also carry out enhanced computer simulations to test whether they match their theory of the cause of the explosion.
Last year, astronomers detected the brightest explosion on recorda gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A, which lasted just over ten hours.
Although it was brighter than the AT2021lwx, it lasted only a fraction of the time, which means that the explosive power of the AT2021lwx was much higher.
Details have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
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