Astronomers observed the largest cosmic explosion in space

Astronomers at the Zwicky Transit Facility in California observed an explosion 100 times the size of the solar system with a luminosity nearly 2 trillion times that of the Sun.

According to the relevant study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society «This event is believed to have been caused by a giant cloud of gas, perhaps thousands of times the size of the Sun, being swallowed up by a supermassive black hole.».

The event was first discovered in 2020 from Zwicky Transit Facility in Californiawhich scans the night sky for sudden increases in brightness that could indicate cosmic events.

«For a year this phenomenon went unnoticed. But gradually, it got brighter. Subsequent observations made it possible to calculate the distance, and then we realized that this is an unimaginable measureReferring to the Guardian Astronomer and Chief of Work, Dr. Philip Wiseman.

«We estimate it to be an explosion 100 times the size of the solar system with a luminosity close to 2 trillion times that of the sun. In three years, this event released about 100 times as much energy as the Sun has released in its 10 billion years of life. Once we realized how super bright it was, we had to find a way to explain it».

It wasn’t in the reasonable range of supernovae, so a tidal disruption scenario was considered: when a star (or something) approaches a black hole, the closer side receives more gravitational pull from the back, the imbalance creates strong tidal forces, the star warps and melts .

The simulations did not put the event observed by the researchers in this category, so they tested the much larger gas cloud theory, as follows:Supermassive black holes are usually surrounded by a huge halo of gas and dust. We speculate that some of this material may have been broken down, perhaps by a galaxy collision, and sent inward».