Astronomers record unprecedented cosmic explosion

A simulated image of a star being sucked into a black hole, a hypothesis put forward by astronomers about the largest explosion ever recorded.

The Guardian reported on May 12 that astronomers had just observed the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed, an event believed to be caused by a giant gas cloud being swallowed by a "supermassive black hole".

The explosion was recorded to have occurred 8 billion light years from Earth and was 10 times brighter than any other cosmic explosion ever observed. So far, the explosion has lasted more than 3 years when observations from Earth began.

"It went unnoticed until it gradually got brighter," said Dr. Philip Wiseman, an astronomer at the University of Southampton (UK) who led the research team. Only subsequent observations showed how far away the explosion was, surprising astronomers with its unimaginable scale.

"We estimate that it was a fireball 100 times larger than the solar system, with a luminosity more than 2 billion times that of the sun. In three years, this event released 100 times more energy than the sun releases in its 10 billion-year lifetime," said Mr. Wiseman.

The explosion, dubbed AT2021lwx, is believed to have been the result of a cloud of gas, possibly thousands of times larger than the sun, plunging into the mammoth black hole. The gas cloud may have originated in the dusty ring that normally surrounds black holes, though it’s unclear what caused it to veer off course and be sucked in.

The burst was first detected in 2020 by a California observatory that monitors the night sky for sudden increases in brightness, which can be a sign of cosmic events such as explosions, passing meteors or comets.

However, the event initially drew little attention, before further observations and distance calculations revealed it was extremely rare. According to AFP, astronomers can now use the discovery to search the sky for similar explosions that have been overlooked.

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