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A team of astronomers led by Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) announced the detection of the most powerful and distant flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole, reaching a peak brightness equivalent to 10 trillion suns.
This colossal cosmic event, whose light traveled 10 billion years to reach Earth, is known as a tidal disruption event (TDE). It occurs when a star gets too close to a black hole, causing it to be torn apart by the immense gravity and swallowed whole.
"The sheer energy shows that this object is incredibly distant and unprecedentedly bright," Graham said. "This is something completely different from any active galactic nucleus we've seen before."
A New Record for Cosmic Brightness
The flare was first detected in 2018 from the black hole J2245+3743, whose brightness suddenly increased by about 40 times in just a few months. At its peak, the event was 30 times brighter than the most powerful active galactic nucleus previously observed, known as "Scary Barbie."
Even though more than six years have passed since the event began, the flare has not yet completely faded. According to the team's calculations, the energy released reached approximately 10⁵⁴ ergs, a staggering amount equivalent to converting the entire mass of the Sun into electromagnetic radiation.
Stars Growing Inside Black Hole Discs
Analysis indicates that the star consumed by the black hole was extremely massive, with a mass roughly 30 times that of the Sun. K. E. Savic-Ford of the City University of New York explains why: "Stars this massive are very rare, but we believe that stars inside the active galactic nucleus disk can grow even more; matter is added to them from the disk surrounding the black hole, gradually increasing their mass."
Although the flare lasted for more than six years from our perspective on Earth, scientists believe the actual event likely lasted only two years in its distant galaxy.
"It's a result of what we call cosmic time dilation," Graham explains. "As light travels through the expanding universe, its wavelengths dilate, and with them, time itself. Seven years here equals two years there. We're watching the event as if it were in slow motion."
Importance of the Discovery
This discovery is a significant step toward understanding how supermassive black holes feed on surrounding stars. It also helps scientists distinguish similar events that may have been confused with other flares in the archives of astronomical data.
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