- Astronomers have discovered the largest cosmic explosion in the cosmos that has already been raging for three years
- The event is ten times brighter than any known supernova event, which is when a star dies and collapses on itself
- The explosion was also found to be three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event
Astronomers have discovered the most powerful cosmic explosion ever witnessed that has been raging for the last three years.
The team that the University of Southampton heads were able to uncover the most powerful explosion in space that humans have ever seen. Astronomers found the event to be more than ten times brighter than any supernova event that we know of and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event we have observed, which is when a star falls into a supermassive black hole.
Most Powerful Cosmic Explosion
Scientists call the explosion event AT2021lwx and said that it is comparably longer than other similar events, such as supernovae, which are usually only visible for a few months and emit a huge amount of energy and light. The explosion was found to have occurred roughly 8 billion light years away at a time when the universe was only about 6 billion years old, as per Phys.org.
The team believes the event originated from a vast cloud of gas, potentially thousands of times larger than our sun, before a supermassive black hole violently disrupted it. They argue that the black hole swallowed up fragments of the cloud, sending shockwaves through the cloud's remnants and into a large dusty "doughnut" surrounding the black hole.
Astronomers also witnessed the brightest explosion on record last year, a gamma-ray burst known as GRB 221009A. While that particular event was brighter than AT2021lwx, it only lasted briefly, which means that the overall energy released in the latest explosion was far greater.
The Zwicky Transient Facility in California was the first to discover AT2021lwx in 2020. The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) later observed the event in Hawaii. These two facilities continuously survey the night sky to detect transient objects that rapidly change brightness.
The finding that brought about the observation of AT2021lwx was made completely by accident. When doing routine research, the facilities stumbled across the unexpected explosion that had an unknown origin and scale, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Long-Lasting Emission
While supernova or tidal disruption events normally last for a few months, the new finding continued for years. To determine the scale of the explosion, scientists looked at the light from the event and isolated different wavelengths of light. This data was then used to measure the varying levels of absorption and emission of the explosion.
The research lead, research fellow Philip Wiseman at the University of Southampton, said his team only found the finding by accident. He noted that their search algorithm flagged the explosion while searching for a type of supernova.
Professor Mark Sullivan noted that with quasars, their brightness flickers up and down at various intervals. However, he argued that with AT2021lwx, there was no prior evidence of its emission before it suddenly became one of the brightest things in the observable universe, said Space.
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